Title: All the Pretty Little Ponies
Author: Lady Eliza
Rating: T
Summary: It isn't always the easiest thing to do watching your children move away, especially a mother with her daughter. A lullaby connects them.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls, which is owned by WB/CW and Amy Sherman-Palladino. The Song 'All the Pretty Little Ponies' does not belong to me.
-GG-
She could remember the day she'd seen the tiny baby through the window at the hospital nursery. It had been extraordinary to think she had given life to such a perfect human being. Being sixteen and a mother had been hard, but at that moment she'd known what it was to love unconditionally without the reserve that she had with her own parents. Her wonderful little girl had given her a purpose and a steel resolve that was of a momma cub protecting her young. Looking at her little girl…Lorelai Leigh…she'd hummed a lullaby.
Hush-a-Bye
Don't You Cry
Go To Sleep My Little Baby
When You Wake You Shall Have
All the Pretty Little Ponies
She watched the quiet child with a sense of awe and accomplishment. Finally, after so many years she had been blessed with a child that was going to continue the family line. She folded her hands on top her stomach and smiled her contented smile. She had a daughter whom she could raise into an accomplished young lady of refinement and grace. It was what was expected of her; her mother had done the same thing with her and therefore she would follow the example set forth with her own child. Looking at her daughter…Lorelai Victoria…she hummed a lullaby which had been sung from mother to daughter for generations in the Cabot family.
In Your Bed
Mamma Said
Babies Riding off to Dream Land
One By One
They've Begun
Dance and Prance for Little Baby
Lorelai had finally found something she was good at and it was a pleasure to be a mother. Having come from a cold and unforgiving home, it was a relief to know she had all the love to spare. Rory had been the one who had brought it out, and for that alone she would never regret having her child as she did. The bond she shared with Rory would forever be in place no matter the obstacle, no matter how much they would fight.
Rory would sometimes wake crying and Lorelai would pick her up from the crib and rock her back to sleep while humming the lullaby she'd become accustomed with. She didn't know where she'd learned it, but it was a moving tune from her childhood. Maybe a nanny had sung it to her…
No matter, she looked at Rory and quietly sung the song, wherever it was from, it was lovely to have these moments of peace with her daughter. She'd only wished she'd had the same with her mother.
Quietly Lorelai laid her daughter in her little crib and turned on the horse mobile. She stopped at the door to Rory's room and looked at her sleeping daughter wistfully.
Blacks and Bays
Dapples and Grays
Running In the Night
When You Wake
You Shall Have
All the Pretty Little Ponies
Emily looked around at the décor in her daughter's large suite of rooms and smiled her approval at how the decorators, maids, and other hired help had set it up. She'd chosen everything of course and it was just as she'd wanted. The room was tastefully done with framed photos of horses, a great passion of Emily's and hopefully one her daughter would emulate.
She looked inside the nursery and saw that her daughter was quietly looking at the décor in the room. It seemed her little girl had great taste at two weeks old. Emily rocked the rocker in which her daughter lay and softly sung the words to her favourite lullaby. On the last note of the song she looked at Lorelai, brushed a bit of black hair out of the child's forehead, and left the room. Little Lorelai Victoria continued to watch as her mother left the room.
Emily paused at the door, but didn't turn around to have a last look. Instead Mrs. Richard Gilmore gave her orders on the care of her daughter to the nanny. It was always done this way, child rearing. Not once had Emily picked up her daughter, she didn't want to mess up her gown for her evening out.
Can't You See the Little Ponies
Dance before Your Eyes
All the Pretty Little Ponies
Will Be There When Your Arise
Through the years Lorelai had sung that song to her daughter whenever she'd had trouble sleeping and it had become somewhat of a tradition. Whatever ailments, broken bones, or bruises affected Rory that lullaby would always be sung to her at night.
Looking down at her sixteen-year old daughter it was a shock to see the years go by and how much they had come to depend on one another. They had literally grown-up together and it was nice to see that Rory had turned out into a great kid. Her worst fear had been treating Rory as her parent's had treated her, but that hadn't happened thus far. As she looked into her teenaged daughter's room she hummed a familiar tune.
Hush-a-Bye
Don't You Cry
Go To Sleep My Little Baby
When You Wake
You Shall Have
All the Pretty Little Ponies
The years had been difficult for Emily as her relationship with her daughter deteriorated, both ladies becoming distant and hostile. Lorelai did not like all the things that Emily did and she sometimes refused to go to parties or find suitable friends from the right families. She did not know how to deal with a daughter who rebelled against what she, Emily, had been raised to pass on to the next generation. Why did her daughter not understand that the only way to catch the right husband was to learn all she could of how to be a lady?
Emily had high hopes for her daughter and prayed the rebellious faze would be outgrown. Then that terrible news about the pregnancy had happened. Emily had been utterly shocked and wondered where she had gone wrong. She stood by her Lorelai's bedside and looked down at her six-month pregnant, sixteen year old daughter and tried to find the quiet little girl she had watched all those years ago. Emily swept some of the black hair off her daughter's forehead and hummed a lullaby for her daughter, and now grandchild, in her mother's womb.
Nothing would ever be the same again…
All the Pretty Little Ponies
She couldn't believe it was time already. How was she going to cope with her daughter so many miles away? Going off to Yale had been nothing when thinking about the distance that would soon separate them. Lorelai knew that she needed to let her daughter go off on her own to find her place in the world, but letting go was hard to do. She'd had twenty-two wonderful years with Rory and would have her memories of the bond that both of them shared. It was special.
She looked into her daughter's room one last time and hummed that familiar lullaby that had become so a part of their nightly ritual. It would be the last time things would be like this and she wanted to cherish all the moments before everything changed. On the last note of the song Lorelai Gilmore turned away from her peacefully slumbering daughter and wiped away the remnants of tears and walked up the stairs to her room. Humming all the way…
Hush-a-Bye Don't You Cry
No, No, NO! It wasn't supposed to be this way. She had thought that she and her daughter would have several years to get to know one another. How could Lorelai just take Rory and leave? Emily couldn't fathom how such an occurrence had happened and she had no way of knowing if her daughter and grand-daughter were alright.
The always immaculate Emily Gilmore sat in her daughter's old nursery, which had been redone to accommodate Rory and held a stuffed chestnut mare to her chest and cried like she'd never cried in her life. She had lost her daughter when Lorelai had become pregnant, but it had never occurred to her that her child would move out without word as to where she was going or how she was going to support herself.
Nothing was as it should've have been. Lorelai was supposed to move out when she had gotten a successful job after she had gone to Yale or when she was moving into a home of her own with her husband. It had never been in the plans for Miss Lorelai Gilmore of the Hartford Gilmore's to become a teenage mother and leave home.
Emily rocked her self with the stuffed toy and hummed the lullaby that she had become familiar with, but this time it was to an empty room. No child was there to hear the song like they should have. One broken woman sat in the childhood room of a lost little girl and cried tears of sorrow for all that had been lost and unsaid between mother and daughter.
She hadn't gotten to say good bye to her little girl or watched her daughter sleep in her childhood room for the last time. That had been denied to her and for that she would always yearn.
Emily got up and walked out of the room without looking back, humming all the way, turned off the light and closed the door to the now empty room. She hadn't gotten to say goodbye.
-GG-
Author's Note: I wrote this after I heard the song 'All the Pretty Little Ponies' by Catherine Raney, from the movie Flicka. I tried to imagine what Lorelai was feeling when she first saw her daughter and when Rory finally left home. As I started writing Lorelai and Rory's relationship, I decided to add Emily's as well. I know Emily may be portrayed as cold and distant, but I feel she was raised to be a certain way and she tried to do her best. Emily, to me anyways, reminds me of typical upper crust mother, but she also has feelings and you can see how she felt when she first saw her daughter and the way her daughter left home. On a side note, I'm still writing my other fanfics, they have not be abandoned, but I have no idea as to when I will get a chance to write enough for another chapter.