It's been a while, hasn't it?
Today's installment was inspired by my relatives' reactions whenever my two youngest cousins come around for reunions and written because Mary McDonald reminds me of one of my aunts.
0000000000
Neither Lee nor Kara knew what really happened whenever the door to his parents' house opened.
One moment they were standing on the porch a happy family.
And the next, they were shell shocked statues.
Minus one.
"Hi!"
"Hey! There he is."
"Come to Grandma."
Little Billy was squealing, wriggling, and drooling in delight at the attention being showered upon him by his grandparents as they plucked him out of Kara's arms and whisked him into their home.
Kara and Lee followed at a slower pace, making sure that the front door was shut behind them before they went into where Laura and Bill were playing with Billy in their living room.
Kara immediately began rummaging through the diaper bag hanging off of Lee's shoulder and pulled out a cloth diaper.
"Uhm, sir? You should put this on…he's been spitting up a lot lately. Especially when he gets overexcited"
And so Billy promptly did. Splattering himself and his grandfather with the remains of his last meal.
Kara reached out to take her son, "Here, let me take him."
But Bill just waved her back and stood up.
"Don't worry, we've got it," he said.
"I've got a couple of new outfits I've been meaning to bring by," Laura added with a hint of glee in her voice. "Now we can see how he looks in them."
The threesome hurried off upstairs, leaving Kara and Lee alone in the living room.
Lee just shrugged and dropped the diaper bag to the floor. It was just another typical visit. He and Kara were both sure that Billy was going to be spoiled rotten by his grandparents, but he was going to learn so much from them as well.
"I'm thirsty," Kara said.
So the two of them made their way to the kitchen and Kara opened the fridge to begin rummaging through it while Lee checked the oven and timer to make sure that nothing was going to burn.
They walked out of the kitchen with their drinks and while Kara followed the sounds of Billy having fun back to the living room, Lee was distracted by a fairly large picture frame hung in the downstair's hallway.
It was a dual frame containing two pictures taken within twenty minutes of one another.
The one taken first was a bad photo by any standard.
Lee's blurred figure dominated most of it, his tired face and days-old growth of stubble blurry and brightly lit by the camera's flash. Behind his shoulder was Kara, who had been too preoccupied with the bundle in her arms to have noticed what was going on. But in this photo, just a scrap of light blue blanket was visible.
The other one was of better quality and showed Kara and Lee sitting on their living room couch, focused on nothing but the baby boy in her arms.
"You two never liked this photo," Laura suddenly said, surprising him.
"It's not that we don't like it," Lee stammered. "But couldn't you at least take it out and put something else in there?"
Laura shot him a look that he remembered from well from his years in elementary school.
"We like it," she said simply. "My house. My rules."
He really couldn't argue with that.
0000000000
It was a chilly day when they brought Billy home from the hospital.
Lee hurried up to the front door ahead of his wife and child, weighed down by a suitcase and a bag. His vision was obscured by the strings of the helium balloons Kara insisted on bringing with them.
"Hurry up, Lee," Kara's voice came from over his shoulder. "I don't want my baby getting sick."
"Hang on," Lee grunted.
He shifted the heavy load into one arm so that he could fit his house key into the lock. It turned easily and he used his shoulder to open the door. He'd begun to say: "Welcome home, Billy," when…
FLASH!
It was a combination of his old military training as well as his natural over-protectiveness that made him react so quickly, moving his body in front of his wife and child to protect them from whatever it was that was coming at them.
But then there were voices welcoming them home and those familiar figures that became sharper as his vision cleared.
"Dad! Laura!" Lee blinked hard to try and get those spots out of his eyes as he maneuvered his way into the house carry his heavy load so that Kara could enter with her even more precious bundle.
FLASH!
Another photo.
Laura smacked Bill on the arm and admonished her husband, "Stop, Bill, and help the boy out."
At his wife's look, the former admiral handed over his camera and took the suitcase from his son. Although Lee's load was now definitely lighter, the balloon strings still obscured his vision, and the balloons themselves threatened to tangle themselves with the ceiling lights.
"Kara?" Lee called from the hallway.
"Yeah?" she answered from where she'd sat down in the living room.
"Where do you want the balloons?"
Kara was too preoccupied with cooing at the cherubic face to really care at the moment. "Just put them anywhere."
"Okay!"
Lee motioned for Bill to follow him upstairs.
"You know, Dad…we gave you that key for emergencies."
"I think we could make an exception for my grandson's homecoming."
Kara wasn't aware of this exchange between the father and grandfather of her child. Laura had gone off to the kitchen to get her something to drink, so for the moment it was just her and Billy.
A soft smile graced her features as she watched and felt her baby shift in her arms while lost in his little dream world.
What sort of dreams did babies have when they were less than a week old?
Would they be about things as mundane as being fed, changed, and rocked?
But were such things mundane to someone so young?
And while she was contemplating such things, Kara softly traced the tips of her fingers along Billy's tiny little features. She paused at the bump of his barely there nose and smiled wider at the sensation of the small puffs of air from his breathing.
Just then a strong arm came around her shoulder as the couch shifted under her.
A soft kiss was placed just behind her ear, causing her to lean back into her husband's solid body.
She was enveloped in a feeling of safety and contentment.
Gods have mercy on the soul of whatever fraker tried to take that away from her.
"Thank you, Kara," Lee whispered into her ear.
She shook her head. "No…thank you.."
FLASH!
This time no one in this new little family really noticed.
00000000000
They were driving home later that night.
The interior of the car was illuminated by the light of the streetlamps and the headlights of the occasional passing car.
Kara looked across at her husband and thought about her baby fast asleep in his car seat in the back.
To think that she had grown from a self-destructive bitch trying to run away from her crappy life into a woman with a job she loved, with a loving husband who accepted her warts and all, and trusted her with his entire existence, and with a beautiful baby boy who she hoped she'd never disappoint.
She'd once tried to avoid all this; thinking that she would just be setting herself up for a fall she could never recover from.
How idiotic she had been.
Shaking those negative thoughts from her head, Kara reached over and took one of Lee's hands off of the steering wheel and brought it to her lips for a kiss.
He glanced over to where she smiling at him.
It was at this moment that she wanted to say something deep and meaningful, but that had never been their style. They never really needed grand gestures to prove to each other that they were together forever.
They always barely averted disaster every time they tried.
So instead she said, "You know what's nice about visiting your folks?"
"What's that?"
"No diaper duty."
They softly laughed, mindful not to wake the baby.
0000000000
AN: This is it for "Photos". Thanks for reading, everyone.
And be sure to review this final installment!!
