Once upon a time... her daughter, his daughter, their son...
Trix would have been appalled. That's the sort of story you tell about other people, not about your own family.
Even if her grandmother had lived in France.
Emily, though... She kicked up a ruckus about it all. About the existence of each and every one of these children, their parentage, and what would surely happen in their lives because of it. It exhausted her to think of the storms her mother had kicked up in life.
Though, secretly, she was a little proud of their ferocity.
In hindsight, that is.
She could remember a time, a simpler time, when her life had been less open, and when she'd been younger and therefore more afraid. When it had been She And Rory Alone. With just those capital letters.
They Alone.
She had fretted about money and exerted every molecule of energy she had to not let her daughter see that. Only to find out, much, much later, just how bad her acting had been. And how very wise her daughter was.
About most stuff.
One autumn, all those years ago, she had bartered with Miss Patty: She would make the costumes for her ballet if she would give Rory lessons. Rory had just finished reading 'Ballet Shoes' and had liked Posy Fossil best, so ballet lessons it had to be. Even years after this phase had blown up in her face and ever-growing feet, Rory refused to watch any Meg Ryan movies after the blonde had co-opted the 'shoe books' in 'You've Got Mail'.
'They were mine first!'
But that ballet. Absolutely hilarious. 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' on that tiny stage with the full Mendelsohn score cranking on a turntable. Every girl in town had wanted to be the fairy queen, and every boy bribed or conscripted into tights.
And Rory and Lane the most beautiful little fairies of all: Cobweb and Mustardseed!
And she had stitched every tutu; about a thousand miles of green tulle, and hot-glued on little sequins, and cut leaves from felt and construction paper until her fingers ached and she could peel the dried glue off them in layers.
But the night of the performance---a perfect, crisp, starry, Stars' Hollow night---every child in town danced. And every child was beautiful and she had laughed and applauded wildly through her tears with all the other mothers.
It hadn't mattered who tripped, it hadn't mattered whose leaves had fallen off, it hadn't mattered that she was young and worried about money... It had been a pure moment.
Until she felt it for the first time. That clench of guilt which would and surely did come again.
Maybe it was because she and Rory, that night of dancing, finally truly did belong to a community of their own. That they were at last completely home.
Perhaps it was because she was now old enough to 'get it' a bit, or at least was mother enough.
But she felt the first pang of regret that night.
And contrition. Because her mother would have loved of all things to see Rory dance as a fairy. Hell, her mother would have loved to have seen Lorelai dance as a fairy once upon a time. And even though she knew it would have been awful: That Emily would have sneered at the homemade costumes and have gone on to pull every connection she had to transfer Rory to the Royal Ballet the very next day...
Despite all this she was vexed at herself for not having called her parents and invited them.
And that's how magic moments become bitter. Magic and bitter at once. What would be the cute combo word for that?
Mitter?
No, the word would be sorrow.
'I'm sorry, Mom,' she thought then.
She turned off the tv then and leaned over to jostle her husband gently awake.
"Let's go upstairs," she whispered.
"Hmmm..." he sighed and stretched.
Three children between them, one asleep under their roof even now, she counted as she pushed her happily-ever-after up the stairs.
And does Emily know?
Does her mother hear the little apologies she thought then and still thinks now. Or is she past caring, so far and distant away as she is?