DISCLAIMER: Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!
RATING: T - For Teen (for mild language)
PAIRINGS: GSR/YoBling/Etc.
SPOILERS: None... 6th Installment of The Discovery Series
SUMMARY: A series of Random One-Shots following the continuing years of the Discovery Series storyline.The family storyteller gathers up some photos and shares a perspective on the past. (including a "photo album" scrapbook) GSR/Yo!Bling/Etc.
A/N: There was such a HUGE outpouring of requests to keep this thing going, I sort of changed the original intent of this final installment. It has now morphed into a series of One-Shots taking place over a huge expanse of time in this little universe I've created. I'll keep writing them as long as people keep reading them. Thank you all for supporting this series.
A/N2: If you want to get the FULL experience of this series, you'll need to check out the link in my profile. There are graphics that go along with the story. I've tried to describe each one a little bit, but there are extra surprises in the ones on the website.
REVIEWS: Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Strewn across the entire expanse of the oversized table in the kitchen were stacks of photographs, a large variety of cardstock paper, little packages of letters, and a whole host of the supplies commonly found in the scrapbooking section of any craft store. Someone was either very behind in their scrapbooking duties, or she was working on one heck of a project.
The kitchen was quiet for the first time in days, and the woman seated at the table was determined to get as much done as possible. Her hands moved deftly through the photos, selecting the ones she needed for the sand colored cardstock taking the spotlight in front of her at the moment. She carefully arranged the pictures on the paper, making sure they all fit exactly the way she wanted them. Brushing a stray lock of auburn hair from her eyes, a glint of silver caught the light, making visible the march of time through her tresses.
As he stood in the doorway watching the woman hard at work, a smirk played over his face. He marveled at the fact that even when she was on vacation, there was work to be done.
"Ya know, we had the only Mom that could ADD better than any kid in the neighborhood, don't you?"
She turned to find a tall, strikingly handsome young man leaning against the doorjamb with a towel hanging from around his neck as he chuckled at her current state. "Yeah, well, with kids like you…what choice did I have?"
He kicked off his sandals onto the deck and came through the door. "I guess that whole two at once thing didn't help either, huh?"
"Followed immediately by three more… No, not hardly." She watched him walk to the fridge and reach in for a bottle of juice. "Remember to leave the apple juice."
He turned to her with a question on his face, and then it dawned on him. "Right! For the midgets." He dug a little deeper into the refrigerator. "How about the cranberry juice?"
"As long as there's enough for Pop's tequila sunrises tonight, you're good." She went back to her task as he sought out an unreserved drink. One of the best parts about being a grownup was the fact that he got to have a drink with his father, and his father made the best Tequila Sunrises. That cranberry juice had a higher purpose.
"Well, it's obvious the years haven't hit the inside of your head yet." He enjoyed the huff he got from his mother and the grin on his face showed it when he turned back around to see her glare. He casually took a drink from the bottle of Gatorade he had retrieved and then pointed to that same wayward strand of hair which bore the evidence of her years.
She looked up to see what he was referring to, and then blushed slightly upon seeing the glaring example of her advancing age. "Yeah, well… None of those red dyes really match my hair color, and your father threatened to have me committed if I started being high maintenance this late in life."
He scanned the main area of the house and then asked, "Speaking of…where's the old man hiding? And the rest of the crew too?"
"He & Patrick took the little ones down to the lake for some fishing. The girls went into town to restock the ice cream supplies, and the rest of them went out on the ATV's." She shrugged off his question with her answer, all the while affixing the photos to the page.
Taking a seat opposite his mother on the bench seat, he peeked over the table to see exactly what she was doing. He found several pictures of two little toe-headed boys that he instantly recognized. "Whoa! Some of those are from the dark ages, Momma. What's that for?"
"Trying to get this thing done before the big party." She ran a hand through her hair in frustration and disturbed one of the piles of photos, which she then had to straighten out. "But with David on leave with the girls this summer, and the new coroner in Henderson knocked up, I'm short on bodies and having to take up the slack myself. Thankfully I haven't had to pull a graveyard yet." She re-stacked the photos and worked to set up the adhesive for the lettering. "I haven't worked a grave since you're brother was born."
"Which one?" He took great delight in interrupting one of his mother's little rants. Mostly, because it only served to make them just a little more involved. Throughout his life, he was well aware of his place in their family; he was the instigator.
"Ha, ha. You know full well that I moved to days when I went back to work after Daniel was born." She shook her head and set about pressing the letters into place as she continued to talk at a breakneck speed. "That's when Al decided it was time to retire. Though I'm not entirely sure why, since all he did was run for county coroner the very next day, but that was his headache. When I finally retire, it's not going to be to run for an office. Pop always said the only good elected official was the one leaving office."
"Was that my Pop, or yours?" He picked up one of the stacks of photos and started flipping through it as he waited for her answer.
"Mine… You won't recognize any of those." She went back to her page and set about to finish it as he worked to figure out who was in those photographs.
"Holy crap! Are these really Uncle Gil?" He had trouble imagining that the young man in those pictures was the same gray haired man he had grown up with. "I mean, I never saw him like this…this…"
"Young?" She laughed at her son's reaction to seeing the old pictures. "Ya know…we all were once."
"Well, I've seen the pictures of you. Grammy used to show them to us all the time. But I don't think I've ever seen these. How come?" He handed the stack to his mother so that she could make sure they were in the right order.
"A few of these came from your grandmother, but most of them were from Grandma Mary. I found an envelope full of them when your Pop and I were cleaning out the gallery after it was finally closed down." She stopped on one and chuckled. "He really was a handsome devil, huh?"
"Totally!" He instantly recognized his mistake and tried to correct it. "Not that he isn't anymore, but…" He blushed when he realized his mother had totally played him. "How do you always do that?"
"Years of practice…" She winked at him and added, "And I gave you half of your DNA, Mikey."
"Right… So, why the page with all the pictures of me and Patrick if it's for Uncle Gil's party?"
"Well, I'm trying to make a book with all of the important things in his life, and seeing as he was there when you were born, and one of you has his name, I think that qualifies… Don't you?" She put the finishing touch on the page, and then handed it to her son.
"Yeah, I guess so… He's always been there for us, too. After all, Uncle Gil is the reason I got into entomology." Michael traced the edge of a picture of two blonde haired boys and a woman with flowing white hair as they read from a children's book. "Well, him and Grammy."
"Yeah, but I still blame Sara and R.J. for your crazy environmentalist streak." She looked over the table to see which image had captured her son's attention. "That's always been one of my favorites. And Momma kept a copy of that one with her at all times."
Michael looked up from the page and smiled when his mother continued to explain. "When she passed away, your father and I found one in the frame beside her bed, one in her purse, one in the little album she took everywhere, and another in the big scrapbook we started for her when you monkeys were born."
The smile on his face was filled with pride as he looked over the page that bore his double image in several stages of his life. "When did you take this one?"
He turned the page around and pointed to a picture containing a pair of identical, fair-haired boys, sleeping soundly beside each other. There was a delighted smile on his mother's face as she recognized the photo in question. "Well, it should look pretty familiar right now… You're Aunt Sara took that one when you boys wouldn't get up one morning here at the cabin."
"Oh wow! That's one of those fold up thingies, huh?" He shook his head as he tried to remember when the picture was taken. "Well, that had to be when we were like seven or eight… Since I think that was the only time we had that much hair once we started school."
"And it was so light, too… You got so embarrassed when Greg saw you both and called you the Toe-Head Twins that you begged your father to buzz your hair right then and there." She practically giggled with the memory, and it reminded him of how she looked when he was still a boy. "And when he wouldn't do it, little con artists that you were, you managed to convince poor Nick that your Pop didn't have his cutters with him and got him to buzz your heads."
Laughing outright with the reminder of that episode in his life, Michael admitted, "Uncle Stephan was convinced we were gonna grow up to either be felons or lawyers."
"Thankfully, he was wrong on both accounts." They both enjoyed a round of laughter with her joke.
His attention finally made its way to the picture in the center of the page; two boys with light hair, walking hand in hand with a petite little girl sporting a healthy head of brown hair. They were walking away from the camera, off on some adventure and not caring a bit that they were without a single grown up. From their statures, he decided the trio was probably in the neighborhood of four to five years old.
"That's one of my favorite pictures. The three musketeers, off to save the world, or find some mischief to get into." He reveled in the knowing smile that played over his mother's features. "You guys were four that summer, so Lilli was just a few months shy of four."
"So, we were always at least a head taller than her, huh?"
"Only until high school… Then you were even taller." The reality of that statement had them both rolling with laughter.
When things had finally calmed down, Michael looked around the table and asked, "Should we start getting this stuff cleaned up before the troops make their way home?"
She looked around the table and sighed. "Yeah, I guess you're right." Heaving a deep breath, she resigned herself to being done for the time being. "At least I got one page done."
Michael walked around the table and came to stand behind his mother. He reached down and wrapped his arms around her shoulders as he leaned his head into hers. "Tell ya what… If you tell me what the heck me and Pat are doing in this picture…" He pointed to the photo showing the two boys in shorts, on the deck of the cabin, obviously playing with something very small. "Then I will stick around another week and help you with the scrapbook."
Stephanie squeezed the powerful arms of her son, and beamed with intense joy and unending pride. "You've got a deal!" He sat down in the chair beside her and waited for her to begin. While he knew his place in the family was as the instigator, his mother was most certainly the storyteller. And just like everything else she did, she was very good at it.
We were taking our annual vacation together at the cabin, and I woke up a little late that morning, because Jimmy had been fussy all night from an ear infection. Your Pop and Uncle Gil were doing their best to keep the troops happy and quiet so that Sara and I could get some sleep. That was the summer she was pregnant with Max, and she was having a rough time of it. So, it was just the Dad's with three very rambunctious and inquisitive toddlers.
Lilli was easy, as usual. She took her morning nap in your Pop's arms, but you two monkeys were ready and raring to go. According to your uncle, that's something else you got from me. I think Uncle Gil was looking for a morning nap by the time Paddie screeched.
That's what woke me up. You boys had the most piercing voices when you were scared or excited.
Anyway, it would appear that Paddie spotted a Daddy Long-Legs on the deck and nearly lost it; ran straight for your Pop and managed to wake sleeping beauty up in the process. By the time he got both of them quieted down, Uncle Gil had the Daddy Long-Legs in his palm telling you all about the thing, and when he picked it up to place it in your hand you giggled so brightly that Sara and I met in the hallway to see what was going on.
We peeked through the kitchen windows to keep from interfering, but what we found had us both scrambling for a camera. Your Uncle Gil was holding a seminar on the wonders of Daddy Long-Legs with a seriously under graduate class of toddlers that was totally rapt with attention.
Unfortunately, by the time we got out there with a camera, Gil was trying to calm Lilli down because the bug touched her, and you and Paddie were desperately trying to catch the little bugger again after Lilli threw it. Paddie only wanted to see the bug, but you wanted to capture and study it.
That picture came after you discovered there were a bunch of rollie poly bugs between the boards of the deck. Paddie kept watch, but you got right down in there and pried one loose with your grubby little fingers. Just so you could play with it.
A lot of rollie poly bugs lost their lives that week, and the Daddy Long-Legs stayed away for many years to come. But whenever we went on vacation up here at the cabin, there was always the first day bug hunt in the nursery. Lilli wanted nothing to do with them, and it was your job to make sure she never saw one in the nursery. Paddie always took her and eventually the rest of the kids for a walk to the swing while you cleared out the loft.
He loved his mother's stories, and this one was no exception. He kissed her cheek and rose from the table when he asked, "So, Pat was always the psychiatrist in the family?"
"And Lilli has always been the boss." Her other son came in behind her and kissed the other cheek. "That's how we always managed to stay out of trouble, Mikey. The woman was a born mastermind."
"Thankfully she uses her talents for good…now." She looked back to find her grandchildren, but instead there was an empty deck. "Please tell me you didn't leave your father down there alone with the midgets?" she asked as he moved toward the sink to clean up.
"Nah… Bethie's with him. I was instructed to bring the fish up here for cleaning, so as not to freak out the munchkin patrol." He pointed to the paltry stringer of fish hanging from the hook outside.
Stephanie got up from the table and walked to the little freezer in the back of the room. "How many?"
"My three, and Jimmy's three. Plus one for Pop, because Christian and Carri thought that Poppop needed a fish, too." Michael and Patrick laughed at the notion as their mother began to dig into the freezer.
"Seven fillets comin' up."
"Ya know, when I first found out you guys swapped out our fish, I thought for sure the world was ending. But when I got older and me & Mikey went to scout camp, I was eternally grateful. Gutting fish is just plain disgusting." Patrick went back out onto the deck and grabbed the fish to toss into the compost bin behind the shed.
Michael watched his mother shrug and take the fish to the sink to thaw out. "I never had to wonder why Paddie didn't go into medicine… Weakest stomach in the world."
"So, why did you guys start packing the freezer with fillets anyway?" He had long been curious about the odd practice, but never got the nerve to ask before then.
"We work with corpses for a living, Mikey… The last thing I wanted was a row of autopsies every day on vacation, too." With the water running over the frozen bits of fish she added, "Besides, you kids were horrible fishermen, and this was the only way to keep you fed without fixing two dinners."