"Mother, your date is here!" Amanda called up the stairs.

"Tell him I'll be down in a minute!" Dotty called back. "I'm almost ready!"

She finished applying her lipstick, then stepped over to twirl in front of the full-length mirror. She was pleased with what she saw – she might be getting older, but she'd kept her figure, and if she had lines around her eyes, at least she could be happy that they were laugh lines.

Life is good, she thought. Amanda finally seemed ready to settle down again, Lee was delightful and Curt, well Curt had surprised her with a mysterious invitation today, and you couldn't ask for much more romance than that at our age, could you?

She thought back to that morning when Amanda had gone to answer the doorbell and returned with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a corsage in a box.

"How lovely!" she'd exclaimed. "You are so lucky! That Lee Stetson really is an 11!"

"Yes, he is," agreed Amanda. "But these aren't for me – they're for you!" She held out the bouquet so that Dotty could indeed see her name written in flowing script across the envelope attached. She reached for it and opened it carefully, while Amanda watched with interest.

"Lovely flowers for a lovely lady. Please join me tonight in your favorite dress. A Not-so-secret Admirer." The corsage of striped pink and white lilies had been the perfect complement to her favorite purple evening gown, as Curt well knew.

"Oh that's so sweet," Amanda had exclaimed when she passed her the card. "What a good thing I don't need you to stay home with the boys tonight. At least I hope I don't… I mean, gosh, work has been just crazy these days."

"Amanda! Do not even joke about that! And you know the boys are old enough to be left home alone! I can't believe you would even ask-" She stopped dead when she realized her daughter was trying very hard not to laugh. "Very funny," she muttered.

"I wouldn't dream of interfering with your evening out, Mother," Amanda smiled and reached out to rest her hand on top of Dotty's. "I'm sure you're going to have a lovely time."

"What do you suppose Curt has planned?" she asked, studying the card. "It says my favorite dress and he knows that's my purple one, but that's quite dressy – what if he's just taking me out bowling?"

"With a corsage?" teased Amanda. "That seems unlikely."

"You're right," Dotty agreed, beaming. "Oh, I can hardly wait to tell Edna about this! She will be positively emerald with jealousy!"

"I'm sure she will, Mother."

Now, with one last look of satisfaction at her reflection, Dotty made her way downstairs, stopping in the doorway to the family room, to find Lee in a tuxedo and a smile that made his dimples so deep you could drown in them.

"Well, don't you look beautiful," he said. "Like daughter, like mother, I guess."

"Well, you're looking pretty handsome yourself, Lee." Dotty peered around the room, looking for Curt, then turned to look at Lee again. "Are you and Amanda going to another premiere? I thought she said she wasn't busy tonight."

No, we're not," grinned Lee. "But you and I are going to the ballet. Unless, of course, you're too disappointed that I'm not Curt."

"You and I…" Dotty swivelled to look at Amanda who was indeed lounging comfortably against the kitchen island in her jeans – and was definitely not dressed up to go out with Lee. "Did you know about this?"

"Not until he showed up on the doorstep," admitted Amanda, smiling. "Although he was being very evasive at work today, so I was pretty sure he was up to something." She gave Lee a wink.

"You know me so well," he answered, before turning back to Dotty. "So are you ready to go?" He held out his arm, elbow crooked toward her.

She looked back at Amanda, who was beaming, then back at Lee who was looking ridiculously pleased with himself. "Well, I guess I am," she smiled at him.

"Have a good time, you two. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," teased Amanda. "And Lee? Please be careful with my mother."

The sympathetic smile he gave her suggested that there was far more to that comment than was apparent, but Dotty was too excited to pursue that right now. "Oh now I really wish Edna was here – she'd never believe I have a date with such a handsome man!"

"Maybe you meant I should be careful of your mother?" asked Lee over his shoulder as he ushered Dotty toward the front door.

"Yeah, maybe," agreed Amanda.

"This has been just lovely, Lee," exclaimed Dotty as they worked their way across the lobby, sipping the champagne Lee had pre-ordered for intermission. "I still can't believe you planned this."

"Well, I know you loved seeing The Nutcracker when you were a little girl, and I thought you might enjoy seeing it again."

"But just the two of us? I'm sure Amanda would have enjoyed this as well." Dotty surveyed him with narrowed eyes.

"Can't a man just want to concentrate on one beautiful woman for the evening instead of having to divide his attention between two?" dimpled Lee.

"Not without a darn good reason," answered Dotty, teasing him.

"Well, I might have had an ulterior motive," conceded Lee.

"You do?" Dotty perked up.

"I said I might," pointed out Lee.

"Lee Stetson! Don't you tease an old woman!"

"Not old, Dotty, never old," Lee reprimanded her, lifting her hand to kiss it, with a wink.

"You are such an incorrigible flirt," sighed Dotty. "No wonder my daughter loves you."

"Well, I love her too," said Lee, a little more serious. "And that has quite a lot to do with why I wanted to take you out tonight. I wanted to ask you something."

Dotty sucked in a breath with excitement. "Are you asking what I think you're asking?"

"If you mean, am I asking for your permission to marry her, then no," replied Lee, with a half-smile.

"Oh." Dotty couldn't hide her disappointment – she'd been so certain that Amanda and Lee were destined for each other.

"But only because I think we both know Amanda doesn't need your permission to do what she wants. If she wanted to marry me, we both know she'd just go right ahead and do it, whether you liked it or not. She might not even invite you if she thought you were going to stand up and object." His eyes were twinkling at her with a light in them that warmed her right through.

"Well, that's true," she agreed, starting to laugh along with him. "She can be pretty stubborn."

"Well, we both know I'm wrong on one count – she would want you there more than anything in the world." Now there was a trace of something in his expression that she couldn't quite place, but decided that, of course, Lee was thinking about how his own parents would never be at his wedding.

"But are you going to…? You know what? Never mind – what was it you wanted to ask?" Dotty resigned herself to waiting even longer for these two to get their act together.

"Well, all these weeks since Thanksgiving, you and Amanda and the boys, you've all been trying to include me in the traditions and everything, and sometimes, I'm a little…"

"Overwhelmed?" she supplied.

"Not overwhelmed exactly, no," he smiled. "But maybe a little unsure of myself?"

"Unsure of yourself how?" Dotty was really intrigued now. Lee had always been a bit of an enigma, but the one thing she'd always noticed was his calm air of self-assurance, as if he was used to commanding any room he was in.

"I guess I don't know how much or how little I should be trying to insert myself into things," he said with a trace of wistfulness. "These are all your family traditions and I feel like if I try to take part in everything, it looks like I'm trying too hard to shoehorn myself into it, but if I don't take part in everything every time, I look like I don't care. I guess I'm not good at figuring out where the lines are and I was hoping you could-"

"Oh my goodness, Lee Stetson, you certainly know how to ask the big questions, don't you? And just when we only have a few minutes left until intermission is over!" she scolded him, but reaching out to squeeze his arm so that he would know she wasn't serious.

"I'm sorry – I was going to take you for dessert when this was over and talk to you then," he apologized. "I didn't really mean to blurt it all out right now."

"Well, fortunately for you, it's a simple answer. They are family traditions and you're family – or as good as," she added, pointedly, and watched his face light up with a grin. "And most of the fun of traditions is getting to share them or pass them along, but here's the funny thing about family and traditions…" She leaned in conspiratorially, "They don't stay the same."

"They don't?" Lee looked confused. "Amanda makes it sound like…I mean there are rules for tree decorating!"

"Oh I know, Dear," Dotty waved for him to shush. "But this is what I mean: families grow and shrink and grow again, and traditions go right along shrinking and growing with them. People move or get married or have children – everything changes. Now for instance, when Carl and I got married, we had to learn how to juggle our time between my family and his for the holidays – and so did our brothers and sisters as their own families came along and some of the traditions on both sides had to change to adjust to that. And then we had Amanda, and we started our own little things that we did, just the three of us. Then along came Joe, then Phillip and Jamie… and soon we weren't seeing our own brothers and sisters as much because they had their own children and grand-children and they were doing the same as us – passing on the traditions to their own families or making new ones. But the threads of our own families were still there, if you see what I mean."

Lee gazed at her thoughtfully for a moment. "So, kind of like, the more things change, the more they stay the same?"

"Exactly," she exclaimed. "There's no tradition that doesn't get changed a little bit from year to year depending on who's taking part, but it doesn't make them any less of a tradition, does it?"

"I guess not," he conceded. "I guess I'm used to military traditions – those never change."

"Well, maybe you could bring something of that into Christmas this year and add something to all our craziness instead of thinking you just need to make yourself be part of ours," Dotty replied.

"Like what?" Lee asked in a tone of disbelief. "Having it in a different place every year and watching the boys get in a fistfight over the drumstick?"

Dotty had to give into the whoop of laughter at that idea. "Maybe not those ones, but I'm sure you can think of something. For instance, maybe you could start with you and Amanda not getting caught up with last-minute work and missing most of Christmas Eve this year?"

Lee winced and looked abashed. "That would be a good one to start with."

Dotty patted his arm again. "Don't fret about it – you're doing just fine fitting in with the family. You belong there."

"I belong there?" Lee repeated the words under his breath with a tone of wonder.

Just at that moment, the lobby lights dimmed to let people know they should return to the auditorium for the second act.

"I didn't raise a fool for a daughter, Lee. If she says you belong, you belong. And as it happens, I agree with her and so do the boys. Now let's go enjoy the second act. I do love to watch those men in tights."

"Now you're the one who's being incorrigible," Lee reprimanded her with a huge grin.

"I know. Isn't it fun?" she beamed back at him.

Lee and Dotty came in the front door, laughing together over something Dotty had said just before.

"Well, you two look like you had a good time," said Amanda from where she was stretched out on the family room sofa with her book.

"Oh it was simply marvellous, Amanda. I wish you could have been there! Lee is the most wonderful date! So considerate and generous!"

"I know that, Mother," Amanda grinned as Lee blushed at the compliment. "But I don't know – you seemed to have had a pretty high-heel good time with just the two of you. Maybe you should make it a tradition to take my mother out every year, Sweetheart."

She didn't know why her mother and Lee had looked at each other in quite that way, but whatever she'd just said had made them both light up with huge smiles.

"That is an excellent idea, Amanda," said Lee. "I definitely see a new tradition in the making."

"So the ballet was good?" she asked.

"It was – and so was the dessert at Chez Helene's after!" answered Dotty. "And Lee has a little something for you. There must be a joke I'm not getting, but he seemed very sure you'd like it!"

"Then I'm sure I will," said Amanda promptly. Lee pulled something wrapped in tissue paper out of his jacket pocket and came to sit by her, perched on the edge of the sofa. "Are you sure I should open it now? I don't have to wait until Christmas?" she teased.

"No, it's just a little something for the tree that I thought you'd like. They were selling ornaments themed with the ballet as a fundraiser," he explained. "Go ahead – I really think you'll like it."

Amanda looked at him suspiciously because he sounded close to laughing. "Well at least I'm pretty sure it isn't a figurine of the Mouse King," she teased and watched Lee's eyes crinkle up even more. She unwrapped the tissue to reveal a porcelain figurine of the ballet's central couple, Clara in a flowing gown and her prince in his white uniform, arms wrapped around each other's waist, gazing into each other's eyes. "Oh Lee! It's lovely! And so romantic!" she exclaimed.

"Well, it looks it," commented Dotty from where she was mixing her nightcap in the kitchen. "But like I said to Lee earlier, it's so funny to think that since she's snuck back downstairs after bedtime, Clara meets her prince in her nightgown while he's there in a gleaming white uniform! I mean, can you imagine anything more embarrassing? It really must be true love!"

Amanda locked eyes with Lee, both of them working hard not to laugh out loud. "Oh yes, Mother, it really must be!"