Miranda's Spiel: "Firstly, thankyou to each and every one of who left
reviews. It means SO much to me to get so many glowing reviews! I don't
think that I have EVER had so many reviews at one time, seriously!
Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou! In response to a specific query, Rowan is
also a girls' name but is generally more popular for boys. Think Brooke
Shields' new daughter instead of Mr Bean!"
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"Well?" Margaret queried as soon as Rowan and Kelsey were asleep in Hawkeye's bed, pillows to prevent any falls arranged on either side. Rowan had her own crib in her own room, but they had decided to put the babies together for company.
"Well what?" Hawkeye grinned, his eyes alight, but hiding a definite unwillingness to respond honestly. It was not being honest that scared him, but the pain involved..
"Amity, Maggie and Rory, spill!" Margaret repeated. Hawkeye hesitated and glanced back to Rowan. The little girl was fast asleep, her little belly rising and falling with each deep, rhythmic breath.
"Well. . . I . . ." Hawkeye hesitated again, this time unhappily instead of just stalling. He glanced again at Rowan. Margaret looked at Kelsey, her little son was quite happily asleep and unaware of the world around him.
"Hawkeye, what is it?" Margaret pressed, but more gently this time, sensing Hawkeye's pain. Mutely Hawkeye shook his head, words failing him completely.
"Not here, I can't say it in front of Rowan." He spoke at last and stood up.
"Okay," Margaret followed him from the pretty cream-and-green bedroom to the living room. The house was small, with a bedroom for Hawkeye and a tiny room for Rowan that was two degrees away from being a closet.
"Well, I met a girl." Hawkeye began offering Margaret a seat. She got comfortable on the sofa, and he sat down beside her. When they were settled, she nodded for him to continue.
"Her name was Elaine, and I met her in 1953, just after I got home. Well, I see now that she wasn't at all my type. Completely disinterested in anything that didn't affect her, totally despondent when she had the kids, no real time for anyone, couldn't remember anyone's names, called Dad Darby most of the time. That is of course when he wasn't Derek, David or Dylan. She was so. . . well hopeless. Vague is another word, just let everything else drift by her. I probably could have married another woman and lived with her most of the time, and the only complaint Elaine would make was that she didn't know where her lipstick was because I wasn't around to tell her."
"Urgh! I know the type!" Margaret groaned. "And your father's name is Daniel!" She added indignantly. She had met Daniel Pierce, a sweetly charming gentleman at the 1963 reunion. A fatherly man, like her beloved Colonel Potter, Daniel had quickly fallen in love with Margaret and the feeling was mutual. It looked like they had found a father-daughter relationship that had been lacking in both their lives and for the three days that the 4077th and their families were together, Margaret and Daniel had been inseparable.
"Elaine was hardly the sort of woman I want to be my wife, and the whole town, all 300 of us, hated her. I really shouldn't have married her by all accounts. But I had been very in love with M. . . someone else and I wanted to get over her quickly, so I married Elaine. That was about the only time she showed any action, planning 'her' wedding. It was a big wedding, but during the ceremony itself, she may as well have been asleep. Anyway, in 1954 Amity Rose was born. Such a pretty and clever girl, with black hair and blue eyes, like me, She was 9 the last time I saw her, she'd be 11 now." Hawkeye's eyes began to look misty.
"Oh, how horrible," Margaret murmured.
"Well, in 1956 Maggie, Margaret Danielle was born. Margaret after you, Danielle after my father, the two people that made me who I am. She was stubborn, and such a tomboy! Loved baseball, climbing trees, fishing, basketball, football, riding bikes, and falling over to get scabby knees to compare with the boys down the road. She was sturdy with Elaine's brown eyes and blonde curls. I wanted a boy, but was satisfied with two children. Between working and arranging sitters around my shifts and Elaine's inability to raise children, I was busier than I could take to consider a third child. Elaine didn't mind, didn't care actually. But even the best plans go astray, and in 1962 Rory Benjamin was born. He was well, an accident I guess. My little man must be three now. This house is tiny as you saw and Rory had to sleep in here, the girls had Ro's room. By that stage Amity and Maggie were aware of the tension I felt trying to run the house, and get the money so it ran. They were also aware that Elaine had little to no interest in anything that they did. Well, I made things worse, one day, I was in OR, emergency C-section, healthy twin boys, I still remember it, and just as I finish up, a nurse tells me that there's a call for me. It was Elaine, the babysitter, not Della, had phoned three hours ago, Maggie had fallen out of a tree and was screaming her lungs out. The babysitter couldn't get her to the hospital, she had no car plus Rory and another kid to mind, and Elaine had a hair appointment and could I pick Maggie up? I went, got Maggie compound fracture of the radius and all, and later that night, I kind of flipped, I shouted at Elaine, and so in a sulk, she called her mother, who picked her up and she moved out." Hawkeye paused for breath.
"But where does your little Ro come into this?" Margaret asked curiously. She got up and walked to the bedroom door, where she peeked in, checking Kelsey was still asleep. "Is she Elaine's?" Hawkeye smiled and continued.
"Yes, Rowan is Elaine's. Well, we were sad when Elaine left, we were also relatively happy, we managed fine, it meant that Della practically moved in with us, but that was all okay she was more of a mum to those kids than Elaine had been Then, in about August 62 she decided that she was coming back. She'd only been gone two months. We made up, but she'd developed some new ideas about the way I 'treated her' from her mother and it wasn't long before we were fighting. Take that look off your face Margaret, I just asked her to help out a little more. Anyhow, she decided that she'd had enough of whatever I was 'putting her through' so she complained to her mother again. Mum decided if I couldn't treat Elaine right, I couldn't treat the kids right, and so about a week before the reunion, Elaine's mother comes around, collects the kids and Elaine and leaves. I never mentioned it at the reunion I know, I never felt it was worth it. But then she came back about five months later, and dumps an unnamed two-day-old baby girl on me. It turns out that she had been four months gone when she left, Rowan will be 2 in November. She moved away then, and left me with Rowan, no forwarding address and absolutely no idea of where Rory, Maggie or Amity were, I haven't seen any of them since June 1963." Hawkeye choked more than a little at the thought of two long years without his children, and he noticed that Margaret was crying softly too.
"Hey, Margaret, settle down." He slid over on the couch to embrace his friend. "It's alright, you don't need to cry. Maggie-D. I'm right here it's okay." Margaret leaned into the embrace, glad for the protection.
"What?" Margaret jumped at the name.
"Maggie-D it's what I sometimes called Maggie. I'm sorry." Hawkeye blushed guiltily.
"No, you sounded like my sister. My middle name is Dawn, but Emily used to call me Maggie-D so I'd call her Emmylou. Her middle name is Lucinda" Margaret explained as she sniffled a little more and Hawkeye offered her a hanky. She didn't take it, so Hawkeye gently set about drying her face.
"So why were you crying before that?" Hawkeye asked softly, wiping her eyes with the hanky. Margaret, glad to have the fuss being made of her from someone who was genuinely concerned, tolerated it for a few more seconds, before she began to feel silly, and pushed him away.
"It's a lot like my story." She explained. "You see, Tamara, Ben and Laura are MY children."
"OH!" Hawkeye none-too-subtly checked out Margaret's figure. She noticed that and stood up obligingly.
"See, there's still a bit of a belly there." She wasn't half as protective of her figure as she once had been, but was proud of and loved to share experiences of, her time as an expectant mother. She hitched up the hemline of her top to show a stomach that wasn't perfectly flat, four children would do that, but was still as pretty as it ever had been.
"Well you still look great!" Margaret was assured, and realised that although Hawkeye had not questioned her directly, he was wondering about her considerable bust, which he had successfully eyed off without being obvious.
"I'm a breastfeeding mother." Margaret chuckled. "Doesn't half do wonders for the looks!" She had breastfed all of her children, and was aware and proud of her new curvier figure, with bigger hips and breasts than before. She was also aware that it made her look even more beautiful.
"Yeah." Hawkeye blushed, and for a split second glanced at her chest. "Do you still feed Kelsey?" As quickly as he'd looked up, he looked away from her and then a few seconds later, his eyes settled on her face, which showed complete nonchalance to his indiscretion.
"Yes usually before any sleep times and at lunch. I'm surprised he went down without any fuss today, he missed his feed. I guess the bus ride up tired him out."
"Where are you staying?" The query from a concerned Hawkeye indicated that Margaret's story of her lost children was temporarily forgotten.
"The Cove Inn." Margaret replied, a wail from the bedroom drawing both concerned parents to their feet.
"My left foot you are." Hawkeye hurried into the bedroom. Kelsey, scared about waking up in an unfamiliar place had begun to cry, and had woken Rowan, who although used to sleeping in her father's bed, began to cry all the same, the presence of an unknown and crying baby upsetting her.
Both parents picked up their crying children, and it was some time later before they could continue talking.
"Like I said Margaret, you are not staying there!" Hawkeye said, rocking Rowan who sucked on a bottle. Her little hands grasped the bottle and a contented look had formed on her face as she sucked.
"Hawkeye, I couldn't put you out!" Margaret insisted. "I mean, look how uncomfortable you are just by my feeding Kelsey!" Hawkeye was sitting on his bed, in his room, with Rowan. On the sofa, in the lounge, Margaret sat nursing Kelsey. Hawkeye had been embarrassed by this, and had moved into the bedroom to feed his daughter.
"Well, I guess I finally learned some respect for the female species." Hawkeye replied. Rowan had had enough and crawled down, searching now for some solid food.
"Well, you can come out, I don't mind! It's not like I'm naked or anything."
"Pity." Hawkeye murmured under his breath.
"What?" As Hawkeye followed Rowan out, he denied saying anything.
"And Kelsey's had enough anyway." Margaret finished, puzzled. She put her son on the floor and watched as he and Rowan inspected each other, and warily, began to play with some toys Hawkeye put on the floor.
"You are staying, got it?" Hawkeye repeated.
"Where?" Margaret replied. This stumped Hawkeye. There was barely enough room for one man and a baby.
"On my bed," Hawkeye began, and he could have sworn Margaret's eyes lit up. "I'll have the sofa." He concluded.
"I'm not going to let you hurt your back sleeping on that tiny sofa, I'll take it."
"You will not!" Hawkeye replied, a hint of aggravation forming in his voice, yet loving the sparring match with an old fighting partner.
"I will if I want to! I'll just stay at the Cove Inn!" Margaret retaliated. She seemed to be enjoying the squabble as much as Hawkeye.
"I don't think so!" Hawkeye yelled back. "You have a baby to think of, don't make him stay in a hotel." Hawkeye was a good father, that couldn't be denied.
"Well. I am not going to have you putting your back out just for me!" Margaret had been softened by his last argument. He still knew where her soft spots were, but she was determined as ever to argue and win.
"What do you suggest, we sleep together? In the same bed?" Hawkeye shouted at last in exasperation.
"Fine! I'll go and get my things!" Margaret strode towards the door.
"Take my car, and I'll mind Kelsey for you!" Hawkeye offered with a shout.
"Great!" Margaret slammed the door behind her.
"Hmmm." Hawkeye couldn't make sense of what had passed and mystified as all hell, wondered why that woman still confused him after so long.
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Miranda's Spiel (again): Next chapter Margaret tells her story, and will Hawkeye and Margaret REALLY share his bed? R&R and you'll find out!
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"Well?" Margaret queried as soon as Rowan and Kelsey were asleep in Hawkeye's bed, pillows to prevent any falls arranged on either side. Rowan had her own crib in her own room, but they had decided to put the babies together for company.
"Well what?" Hawkeye grinned, his eyes alight, but hiding a definite unwillingness to respond honestly. It was not being honest that scared him, but the pain involved..
"Amity, Maggie and Rory, spill!" Margaret repeated. Hawkeye hesitated and glanced back to Rowan. The little girl was fast asleep, her little belly rising and falling with each deep, rhythmic breath.
"Well. . . I . . ." Hawkeye hesitated again, this time unhappily instead of just stalling. He glanced again at Rowan. Margaret looked at Kelsey, her little son was quite happily asleep and unaware of the world around him.
"Hawkeye, what is it?" Margaret pressed, but more gently this time, sensing Hawkeye's pain. Mutely Hawkeye shook his head, words failing him completely.
"Not here, I can't say it in front of Rowan." He spoke at last and stood up.
"Okay," Margaret followed him from the pretty cream-and-green bedroom to the living room. The house was small, with a bedroom for Hawkeye and a tiny room for Rowan that was two degrees away from being a closet.
"Well, I met a girl." Hawkeye began offering Margaret a seat. She got comfortable on the sofa, and he sat down beside her. When they were settled, she nodded for him to continue.
"Her name was Elaine, and I met her in 1953, just after I got home. Well, I see now that she wasn't at all my type. Completely disinterested in anything that didn't affect her, totally despondent when she had the kids, no real time for anyone, couldn't remember anyone's names, called Dad Darby most of the time. That is of course when he wasn't Derek, David or Dylan. She was so. . . well hopeless. Vague is another word, just let everything else drift by her. I probably could have married another woman and lived with her most of the time, and the only complaint Elaine would make was that she didn't know where her lipstick was because I wasn't around to tell her."
"Urgh! I know the type!" Margaret groaned. "And your father's name is Daniel!" She added indignantly. She had met Daniel Pierce, a sweetly charming gentleman at the 1963 reunion. A fatherly man, like her beloved Colonel Potter, Daniel had quickly fallen in love with Margaret and the feeling was mutual. It looked like they had found a father-daughter relationship that had been lacking in both their lives and for the three days that the 4077th and their families were together, Margaret and Daniel had been inseparable.
"Elaine was hardly the sort of woman I want to be my wife, and the whole town, all 300 of us, hated her. I really shouldn't have married her by all accounts. But I had been very in love with M. . . someone else and I wanted to get over her quickly, so I married Elaine. That was about the only time she showed any action, planning 'her' wedding. It was a big wedding, but during the ceremony itself, she may as well have been asleep. Anyway, in 1954 Amity Rose was born. Such a pretty and clever girl, with black hair and blue eyes, like me, She was 9 the last time I saw her, she'd be 11 now." Hawkeye's eyes began to look misty.
"Oh, how horrible," Margaret murmured.
"Well, in 1956 Maggie, Margaret Danielle was born. Margaret after you, Danielle after my father, the two people that made me who I am. She was stubborn, and such a tomboy! Loved baseball, climbing trees, fishing, basketball, football, riding bikes, and falling over to get scabby knees to compare with the boys down the road. She was sturdy with Elaine's brown eyes and blonde curls. I wanted a boy, but was satisfied with two children. Between working and arranging sitters around my shifts and Elaine's inability to raise children, I was busier than I could take to consider a third child. Elaine didn't mind, didn't care actually. But even the best plans go astray, and in 1962 Rory Benjamin was born. He was well, an accident I guess. My little man must be three now. This house is tiny as you saw and Rory had to sleep in here, the girls had Ro's room. By that stage Amity and Maggie were aware of the tension I felt trying to run the house, and get the money so it ran. They were also aware that Elaine had little to no interest in anything that they did. Well, I made things worse, one day, I was in OR, emergency C-section, healthy twin boys, I still remember it, and just as I finish up, a nurse tells me that there's a call for me. It was Elaine, the babysitter, not Della, had phoned three hours ago, Maggie had fallen out of a tree and was screaming her lungs out. The babysitter couldn't get her to the hospital, she had no car plus Rory and another kid to mind, and Elaine had a hair appointment and could I pick Maggie up? I went, got Maggie compound fracture of the radius and all, and later that night, I kind of flipped, I shouted at Elaine, and so in a sulk, she called her mother, who picked her up and she moved out." Hawkeye paused for breath.
"But where does your little Ro come into this?" Margaret asked curiously. She got up and walked to the bedroom door, where she peeked in, checking Kelsey was still asleep. "Is she Elaine's?" Hawkeye smiled and continued.
"Yes, Rowan is Elaine's. Well, we were sad when Elaine left, we were also relatively happy, we managed fine, it meant that Della practically moved in with us, but that was all okay she was more of a mum to those kids than Elaine had been Then, in about August 62 she decided that she was coming back. She'd only been gone two months. We made up, but she'd developed some new ideas about the way I 'treated her' from her mother and it wasn't long before we were fighting. Take that look off your face Margaret, I just asked her to help out a little more. Anyhow, she decided that she'd had enough of whatever I was 'putting her through' so she complained to her mother again. Mum decided if I couldn't treat Elaine right, I couldn't treat the kids right, and so about a week before the reunion, Elaine's mother comes around, collects the kids and Elaine and leaves. I never mentioned it at the reunion I know, I never felt it was worth it. But then she came back about five months later, and dumps an unnamed two-day-old baby girl on me. It turns out that she had been four months gone when she left, Rowan will be 2 in November. She moved away then, and left me with Rowan, no forwarding address and absolutely no idea of where Rory, Maggie or Amity were, I haven't seen any of them since June 1963." Hawkeye choked more than a little at the thought of two long years without his children, and he noticed that Margaret was crying softly too.
"Hey, Margaret, settle down." He slid over on the couch to embrace his friend. "It's alright, you don't need to cry. Maggie-D. I'm right here it's okay." Margaret leaned into the embrace, glad for the protection.
"What?" Margaret jumped at the name.
"Maggie-D it's what I sometimes called Maggie. I'm sorry." Hawkeye blushed guiltily.
"No, you sounded like my sister. My middle name is Dawn, but Emily used to call me Maggie-D so I'd call her Emmylou. Her middle name is Lucinda" Margaret explained as she sniffled a little more and Hawkeye offered her a hanky. She didn't take it, so Hawkeye gently set about drying her face.
"So why were you crying before that?" Hawkeye asked softly, wiping her eyes with the hanky. Margaret, glad to have the fuss being made of her from someone who was genuinely concerned, tolerated it for a few more seconds, before she began to feel silly, and pushed him away.
"It's a lot like my story." She explained. "You see, Tamara, Ben and Laura are MY children."
"OH!" Hawkeye none-too-subtly checked out Margaret's figure. She noticed that and stood up obligingly.
"See, there's still a bit of a belly there." She wasn't half as protective of her figure as she once had been, but was proud of and loved to share experiences of, her time as an expectant mother. She hitched up the hemline of her top to show a stomach that wasn't perfectly flat, four children would do that, but was still as pretty as it ever had been.
"Well you still look great!" Margaret was assured, and realised that although Hawkeye had not questioned her directly, he was wondering about her considerable bust, which he had successfully eyed off without being obvious.
"I'm a breastfeeding mother." Margaret chuckled. "Doesn't half do wonders for the looks!" She had breastfed all of her children, and was aware and proud of her new curvier figure, with bigger hips and breasts than before. She was also aware that it made her look even more beautiful.
"Yeah." Hawkeye blushed, and for a split second glanced at her chest. "Do you still feed Kelsey?" As quickly as he'd looked up, he looked away from her and then a few seconds later, his eyes settled on her face, which showed complete nonchalance to his indiscretion.
"Yes usually before any sleep times and at lunch. I'm surprised he went down without any fuss today, he missed his feed. I guess the bus ride up tired him out."
"Where are you staying?" The query from a concerned Hawkeye indicated that Margaret's story of her lost children was temporarily forgotten.
"The Cove Inn." Margaret replied, a wail from the bedroom drawing both concerned parents to their feet.
"My left foot you are." Hawkeye hurried into the bedroom. Kelsey, scared about waking up in an unfamiliar place had begun to cry, and had woken Rowan, who although used to sleeping in her father's bed, began to cry all the same, the presence of an unknown and crying baby upsetting her.
Both parents picked up their crying children, and it was some time later before they could continue talking.
"Like I said Margaret, you are not staying there!" Hawkeye said, rocking Rowan who sucked on a bottle. Her little hands grasped the bottle and a contented look had formed on her face as she sucked.
"Hawkeye, I couldn't put you out!" Margaret insisted. "I mean, look how uncomfortable you are just by my feeding Kelsey!" Hawkeye was sitting on his bed, in his room, with Rowan. On the sofa, in the lounge, Margaret sat nursing Kelsey. Hawkeye had been embarrassed by this, and had moved into the bedroom to feed his daughter.
"Well, I guess I finally learned some respect for the female species." Hawkeye replied. Rowan had had enough and crawled down, searching now for some solid food.
"Well, you can come out, I don't mind! It's not like I'm naked or anything."
"Pity." Hawkeye murmured under his breath.
"What?" As Hawkeye followed Rowan out, he denied saying anything.
"And Kelsey's had enough anyway." Margaret finished, puzzled. She put her son on the floor and watched as he and Rowan inspected each other, and warily, began to play with some toys Hawkeye put on the floor.
"You are staying, got it?" Hawkeye repeated.
"Where?" Margaret replied. This stumped Hawkeye. There was barely enough room for one man and a baby.
"On my bed," Hawkeye began, and he could have sworn Margaret's eyes lit up. "I'll have the sofa." He concluded.
"I'm not going to let you hurt your back sleeping on that tiny sofa, I'll take it."
"You will not!" Hawkeye replied, a hint of aggravation forming in his voice, yet loving the sparring match with an old fighting partner.
"I will if I want to! I'll just stay at the Cove Inn!" Margaret retaliated. She seemed to be enjoying the squabble as much as Hawkeye.
"I don't think so!" Hawkeye yelled back. "You have a baby to think of, don't make him stay in a hotel." Hawkeye was a good father, that couldn't be denied.
"Well. I am not going to have you putting your back out just for me!" Margaret had been softened by his last argument. He still knew where her soft spots were, but she was determined as ever to argue and win.
"What do you suggest, we sleep together? In the same bed?" Hawkeye shouted at last in exasperation.
"Fine! I'll go and get my things!" Margaret strode towards the door.
"Take my car, and I'll mind Kelsey for you!" Hawkeye offered with a shout.
"Great!" Margaret slammed the door behind her.
"Hmmm." Hawkeye couldn't make sense of what had passed and mystified as all hell, wondered why that woman still confused him after so long.
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Miranda's Spiel (again): Next chapter Margaret tells her story, and will Hawkeye and Margaret REALLY share his bed? R&R and you'll find out!
