Author's Note: This is a birthday fic for the lovely and talented JMHaughey. My prompt was that it had to be about a tradition Brennan's family celebrated that she didn't know wasn't a real holiday and it had to have Booth, Brennan and Hadley (my chosen name for the baby.) Thanks to RositaLG, jadedrepartee and Baileyjane for the read throughs, idea bouncing and beta work.
Jaime, I hope I did right by you. Happy Birthday, Friend. You are one of the best things to come out of this fandom for me. #Fact
She is young when she first asks about it. Young enough to make something for her mother at school. Young enough that her teacher praises her for coloring inside the lines and cautions her to use her very best handwriting. Young enough to wrap it in tissue paper bound with green pipe cleaners.
Christine Brennan unwraps the gift as carefully as young Temperance has ever seen her handle anything. She is anxious to see her mother's reaction. She has worked quite hard on the gift and hopes her mother will love it.
"Temperance, it's perfect. Something I always wanted."
"You always wanted a construction paper flower pot with a ribbon stem and her handprint as the flower?" Russ is doubtful and far too old to believe that anything made by a child could be a perfect gift.
"Yes." Her mother smiles at her daughter. "I love anything I can keep forever that will remind me of how small you once were."
"I'm not small," counters the stubborn little girl.
"Well, you are smaller now than you will be tomorrow or next week or next month or next year, so that counts."
"Happy Mother's Day!" Her father sing songs as he comes into the room with a breakfast tray. Wearing a scarf from Russ and carefully tucking the craft from her daughter between two picture frames on her nightstand, her mother enjoys breakfast in bed with her family before the fanciest present of the day is opened.
"You spoil me," she tells her husband as she unwraps a new watch he's bought for her.
"Only because Father's Day is next month and I have to give you something to live up to." He teases her, but even the children know he bought it because he adores her.
"When is Daughter's Day?" It occurs to Temperance suddenly that she doesn't remember ever celebrating such a thing.
"There is no Daughter's Day. There's also no Son's Day." Russ is so much wiser than she is sometimes, and often feels the need to prove it.
"That's not fair!" Temperance isn't always as street wise as Russ, but she is always smart. "You are only a mother because of me and Russ. So if we give you presents and have a Mother's Day and Dad gets presents on Father's Day, then there must be a Daughter's Day and a Son's Day."
Her parents are temporarily baffled and uncertain, and once again bowled over by their daughter's intelligence, but her mother is quick to recover. "Well, just because we have never heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I will do some research and see what I find."
At that young age, she is already cognizant of research and its importance. However, she is not quite old enough to realize that she should ask to see the evidence her mother claims to find just a few days later.
"I went to the library today," her mother tells her. "And you were right. Daughter's Day is exactly one half year after Mother's Day."
"It is?" She is so bright, but she is also still young and believes that her parents always have the correct answers.
"Yes. And Son's Day is exactly six months after Father's Day. So on the second Sunday in November, you get a special day and on the third Sunday in December, Russ gets a special day."
She notices the skeptical look on Russ' face but she does not care because Daughter's Day sounds like fun AND she gets to go before Russ does and that in and of itself means that she's won. Those victories seem few and far between sometimes, so she celebrates them when she gets them.
Carefully she climbs the step stool in the kitchen and takes the calendar that hangs next to the phone down off the wall. She procures a pen from the mug on the counter and counts the Sundays in November. On the second one she writes in her best writing "My Day."
In a flash of niceness she flips to December and on the square for the third Sunday she writes "Russ' Day."
Studying her handiwork, she is pleased with what she has written and happy she chose pen, because now it cannot be erased and no one can forget.
And no one does. Though the wait to November is initially quite long, the day itself proves to live up to the hype she's built in her mind. Breakfast in bed, a small present, ice skating, hot cocoa and her favorite dinner. It's perfection. And a short five weeks later, Russ' day is no less fun.
It becomes a tradition, something her mother writes on the new calendar she gets every Christmas.
Until one Christmas her mother isn't there to open her calendar and there is no more Daughter's Day for Temperance Brennan.