Written for 15minuteficlets on LiveJournal.
Word #148: nurture.
She's thinking of taking a night class. Maybe psychology, or literature. Emily Gilmore has spent so many years thinking of other people, caring for other's needs, that she doesn't want to make the choice for herself. She talks to her friends, to Bitty Charleston and to others in the DAR. She mentions it to Richard between business calls, although all he does is murmur and grunt vague assertions that "whatever she thinks is best."
She's tried to talk to Lorelai about it. After all, Lorelai went to business school in her thirties. Granted, significantly younger than Emily's current age, but still old enough to offer some insight into what Emily might expect at college.
It's not like she's never been to school before. She was a Brown girl, and a Yale wife, long before she was somebody's mother or grandmother, long before her energies went solely to charity.
For a time, Emily was her own charity.
She remembers the parties and the sporting events. She remembers the Ivy League boys who would flirt and test her boundaries. The wealthy boys always seemed more certain of themselves, and of their ability to get wealthy girls to do things they might later regret.
She remembers the long nights of studying, even though she'd never considered herself a top student. Emily was naturally intelligent, although not of the Richard or Lorelai or Rory variety of intelligent, but smart enough to make good grades without too much effort.
She remembers the sound of the campus, especially during downtimes, when it was quiet.
Such a different quiet from what she felt now, in this enormous house, with its forgettable staff, with Richard vacant and overworked, with Lorelai gone so many years a lifetime has passed. She is beginning to hate quiet, so the music she normally plays for dinner will sometimes start several hours before, just to keep the sound alive.
She wants so much to get an answer, some magical advise from some wise sage, but at her age, wise sages are harder to come by. People ask her for advise, which terrifies her on some level.
Emily never planned ahead to people asking her advise. She never planned ahead, at least not emotionally, to grandchildren and husbands who have lost their way and wanting so badly to be alive and important again.
Emily has never had to nurture herself, because there was always someone there to nurture her. Her parents, who doted on her in their strict way. The lovely Ivy League boys who flattered and flirted. Her mentors in society, those venerable pillars of Hartford who carefully led her in the very direction that had brought her to this point in her life.
Mid-fifties. Sitting alone at the dining room table, with nobody at all to tell her whether or not she should sign up for Human Development.
Or Classical Literature.
And for a moment she wants to throw the pamphlets across the room. She wants to call her husband, her daughter, her absent friends. She wants to demand their presence, their guidance. She wants answers, because life has become about questions, and she doubts very seriously that her solutions are going to be found in a college syllabus.