Addictions of the Stones, Chapter 1
Summary: Callahan Stone, now an adult with children of his own, recalls his unusual childhood with parents addicted to having children.
"Da-da," my toddler babbles as she takes hesitant steps towards me. I scoot up a little closer to her so that she will fall just into my arms. She does exactly what I thought she would and I scooped her up, hugging her tightly. She was tired, I could tell, so I decided our walking lesson was over for the time being. I put her in her crib and kiss her head before turning off her lamp.
My wife, Ivy, greets me with a big hug as I walked into our infant son's room. "He's just soo perfect, Cal," she squealed softly. We watched him in his crib. He let out the cutest sighs every once in awhile.
"We have the perfect family," I said, smiling tightly. We had been married for less than a year and had already had two kids. Kasen Dawn was technically our little "oopsie"—I invited Ivy to move in with us and one thing led to another and, well, I'm sure you get the picture.
Ivy came from a really small family. She had no siblings and had just one cousin who was eight years older than her. She got the bright idea that Kasen needed a sibling right away. We had recently inherited some money from my parents, who died within a few months of each other, and she convinced me that we needed to try for adoption.
This morning, the blue mini-van—the van I had grew to dread when I lived with my parents—arrived and the stiff social worker dropped off our son with little more than a bored "congratulations".
Ivy had been dead-set on choosing a baby, though I had personally preferred a toddler. Toddlers are much more fun, and you can actually do stuff with them. Babies just kind of lay there until they need a diaper changing or some food. But this whole adoption thing was Ivy's idea to begin with so I decided to go ahead and let her make all the decisions.
Then, just when I was getting okay with letting my free-spirited wife make the decisions, she demanded that I choose the name for the kid. The poor kid didn't have a name even as the social worker shoved him into Ivy's arms. She glared at me, impatiently tapping her foot. "I'm NOT putting my son in a crib nameless! That's just tacky."
"Jack."
"Okay, that's good. Middle name?"
"Umm…Michael?"
"No! Too common."
"Jensen?"
"Cal, I love your dad and we miss him but Jack Jensen? Come on."
"Samuel."
"Okay. I like it. Jack Samuel and Kasen Dawn," she smiled down at Jack.
"Oh, my carpool is here. Here, baby. I'll see you tonight," she said, handing me Jack and dashing off after a quick kiss.
Now I was exhausted. Ivy gave me a sideways look. "Yes, of course we have the perfect family. We have a healthy boy and a healthy girl," she said carefully, "but I don't think we're done yet."
"We've talked about this, Ivy. I don't want 12 kids. Two is the perfect number. You can keep track of their homework, of their schedules…It's easy."
"We'll talk about this later," she whispered, walking out of Jack's room.
I watched her go and then picked up our baby. I held him close, and then showed him around his room. We had thought long and hard how to pick out paint and carpet for both of the kids. We hadn't meant to do the stereotypical blue-pink thing but it just kind of ended up that way.
I put him back in his crib, then walked to the living room where Ivy was sitting. "Baby, you know how I am," I started, sitting next to her.
"Look, I know your issues with your parents and what they did. But I'm not them, and they're not us. I'm not saying we call today and get another kid. But I want to leave the options open. We're so young into our marriage and we already have two…I don't want to finalize it all after just two. Keep an open mind. We can do it," she said, taking my hand.
"I can't even name all my siblings without thinking about it," I said with a small smile. "It sounds so dumb when I verbalize all this. I just don't ever want Kasen or Jack to be in the position me and my siblings are in."
She squeezed my hand. "Never. Your parents…It's wrong. Was wrong. Is wrong…Whatever. Wrong."