The Whole Package
"Okay girls, on three. Ready?"
Two young girls looked up at one another, giggled, and then turned to look at the woman who had spoken. "Ready," they said together, big smiles enhancing their already adorable features.
"Okay, here we go," the woman looked across the room at her first daughter, who knew to join in counting.
"One," both women began together, "two," the little girls giggled, "three!"
As a camera flashed, twelve candles between two cakes flickered and went out at almost exactly the same time. The five adults in the room clapped and cheered.
It was clear which adult was the mistress of ceremonies. She was in her mid-forties, but looked much younger than that. She hugged the little girl with the curly dark hair and big brown eyes. "Happy birthday, baby. My big six-year-old."
The little girl looked into her mother's eyes and smiled. "Do we get presents?"
The woman smiled. "Of course. We have to eat the cake first though, babe."
"Presents first, then cake," the little girl reasoned excitedly.
"Let's see what Lora wants to do, okay? Now, go hug your daddy. He hasn't been hugged by a six-year-old before."
The little girl ran over to a tall man in a flannel shirt and blue baseball cap, worn backwards. The man and girl had the same eyes. Lorelai smiled.
It had taken her years to work it out with Luke, but almost eight years ago, she finally had. The simple idea that she and Luke were finally married with a six-year-old daughter was still enough to make her smile.
"Hey, Lora, where's my other birthday girl?" she called to the other girl.
A little girl with blonde hair and her mother's bright blue eyes made her way over to her grandmother and gave her a hug. "Thanks, babe," Lorelai said.
Although she was her granddaughter and not her daughter, Lorelai loved Lora as a mother. Lora was a prodigiously smart girl in every possible way. Not only did she know her letters and numbers before any other child of her age, but she could almost always figure out how to get what she wanted. She'd learned at three that her parents would give her anything she asked if she said please, and at five learned she could ask the maid to do any of the chores her mother gave to her. Lora was generally a good kid, but Lorelai worried about her for one specific reason: she reminded her of herself.
Rory and Logan tried desperately to be good parents, but were both busy with work. Logan was often traveling on business, and Rory was one of a team of editors for the New York Times. Rory did as much work as she could from home, but had to go to the office once or twice a week. On these days, Rory got Lora up early and took her to Lorelai's house where she could play with Maddie.
As amazing as it might seem, Lorelai and Rory had given birth to their daughters on the same day. Their girls, Madison Lorelai Danes and Lorelai Madison Huntzburger, were more like close cousins or even sisters than aunt and niece.
The idea of naming their daughters the same thing had crossed their minds, but having decided that would have been confusing, particularly as Rory had wanted to continue the Lorelai legacy, they had decided to switch the first and middle names. While it had been rumored, particularly in Star's Hollow, that the name Madison had been alluding to Dolly, in reference to one or both of the two's pregnancy cravings for snack cakes, in reality the only reasoning was that both mother and daughter had liked the name.
You would think that half-sisters Rory and Maddie would have been alike in many ways, as they were raised by the same mother. At the beginning, Lorelai had hoped that Maddie would be like Rory. Rory was the best child Lorelai could have hoped for. Yet somehow, Lorelai's daughters were different in more ways than not, and Lorelai couldn't have picked one over the other to save her life.
Maddie had the benefit of an active father that Rory had never really had, and she had been a daddy's girl from day one. Maddie loved to be outside, and did things with her father like camping and fishing that Lorelai had never had an interest in. Maddie had never had the patience that Rory had, either. She'd never sit engrossed in a single activity for long, a trait that Lorelai believed had been inherited from her.
"Grandma Lorelai, can we eat cake now?" Lora asked enthusiastically.
Lorelai was snapped back to reality by her granddaughter's voice. "Oh, yeah hon, sorry." She smiled, not having realized she'd zoned out. She scanned the room for her youngest daughter. Maddie was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs with her legs pulled up onto it in front of her, pouting. Lorelai felt a mixture of amusement and pity. Oddly, she could still remember some of what it was like to be six.
She went to her daughter, picked her up from her chair, sat in it, and set the little girl back down on her lap. "Hey Mad, you know something?"
Maddie shook her head, still pouting.
"The chocolate cake and ice cream have magical powers," Lorelai said excitedly. "If you eat them before you open your presents, you'll be able to open them faster!"
Maddie's eyebrows came together in thought. "Does the vanilla cake and ice cream do that too?"
Lorelai shook her head gravely. "Of course not. Chocolate always has powers that vanilla will never have."
Maddie smiled and got up from her mother's lap. "Hey Lora," she said, walking toward her niece. "What kind of cake and ice cream are you going to have?"
"Vanilla," Lora said matter-of-factly.
"Good. Okay mommy, we can eat it now."
Lorelai smiled. The day that the magic trick wore off with Rory had been one of the most inconvenient days of her life. She hoped she still had a while to use it with Maddie.
Lorelai sighed happily and allowed her gaze to fall on the various members of her family standing in her kitchen, eyes filled with pride. Maddie, the beautiful child that had her hair and a few of her high-maintenance qualities, urging Rory to cut the cake faster. The perfect child. Rory, the beautiful young woman that was now a wonderful mother with an amazing career and a good husband, cutting the girls' cakes into even squares. The perfect daughter. Logan, with his hand on Rory's shoulder watching his young daughter with as much pride in his eyes as Lorelai had in her heart. The perfect son-in-law. Lora, the girl that shared her name and rebellious nature, eyeing up the pieces of cake that Rory had already cut, clearly trying to deduce which had the most frosting. The perfect granddaughter. April, now a young woman taking a day off from college at Harvard to attend the birthday party of her half-sister and step-niece, standing out of the way taking seemingly random pictures of everything. The perfect stepdaughter. Finally, Luke. Excellent father, grandfather and husband that could do everything from cooking to fixing cars to building boats, scooping ice cream onto the plates beside the cake. The perfect husband. She finally had it. The whole package.