September 29th 2022
Chapter 272
Our Season of Mothers & Daughters
They had been so sure that their vocabulary game would be over once they reached their last leg of this trip, seeing as they would be surrounded by people speaking English again. But the triplets were already intrigued every time they heard people's accents, so when they landed in Australia...
Once again, leaving one country to go to another was met with some resistance from the little girls, but there was no fear. Once they were told it would be a surprise, the intrigue set in, and they were eager to see where they would go. Marianne couldn't exactly be surprised as well as them. It was fine with their first plane and the second, but once they ended up at the gate for the flight to destination, she could read what it was and she knew, while the triplets and Mackenzie had no idea. Oh, she was smiling so much that her cheeks would hurt, but she didn't say a word.
The whole trip had been so long that they really had to rely on their buddy system if they didn't want the girls to lose it with how long they were in the air. Like anything, they turned it into a game, each pair making a team. The layovers were all about giving them a chance to move before they were back on another plane.
When they finally touched down in Australia, everyone was glad, none more than Maya and Lucas. They had made it. They'd have to do it all over again, this time even longer as they returned to Texas, but that was days from now, and they had much better things to look forward to in the meantime.
Georgie and Toph were right at the gate, waiting for them, and when the girls saw them, they scrambled to run to them as soon as they could. When Maya's great aunt and uncle welcomed them to Australia, it was the exact moment the triplets realized that was where they were, and here was the surprise.
They settled into their hotel - much as Georgie insisted that she would have found a way to host all fourteen of them - and fell into a bit of a nap, their internal clocks even further disrupted. That first day was spent mostly between the hotel and Georgie and Toph's home.
The next morning - which was nearer to lunch time - started with Maya finding a stowaway, curled up against her. She hadn't been there the last time Maya had had to get up for Aubrey, but now there was Marianne's sweet blond head pushed up to her. The hotel bed was wider than their one at home, enough that they expected at some point to get many more little visitors, but for now they had the one, and Maya was very happy to have her there.
It wasn't like it never happened anymore, the more she grew, but it had been less for a while... and then May 28th had happened. Since she'd come home, easily two or three times a week if not more, Marianne would be there when Maya woke up in the morning. Sometimes she'd come in the middle of the night. Once or twice, she'd spent the whole night with her mother. Inevitably she'd started to think about what this might mean for Mackenzie, crib escapist that she was, so her later arrivals had come to feel like she'd been resisting the urge as long as she could before finally giving in.
"Hey there, sweet girl, good morning," Maya whispered when Marianne started to wake. She brushed at the fringe of her hair, curtained away from her face. She leaned to kiss her forehead and felt small arms holding tighter to her still. "Did you have trouble sleeping?" she asked. Marianne nodded. "Bad dream?" A shrug. "Do you feel more like an indoor day, or do you want to go and do things?" The response came with blue eyes lifted to her. What things? Maya smiled, an idea coming to her. "How would you feel about having a day just the two of us... and Aubrey," she added after a beat. "She's kind of attached to me these days," she confided in a 'you know what I mean' look toward the six-year-old.
"Just the three of us?" Marianne whispered.
"We can do whatever you want," Maya nodded. "It'll be our day." The way that her eyes traveled, her mind had definitely taken a detour toward 'what about everyone else?' But her mother was offering this, wasn't she? And it was up to her if she wanted it... She really wanted it.
The tricky part was for them to separate from the others, specifically the 'under three' age group. The triplets especially but even Mackenzie would be confused about where their mother and sisters were going and why they couldn't go with them. It might not matter that they, too, would have a great day with their father and the others, not if they couldn't be sold into it, preferably with as little of a lie as possible.
It was not entirely perfect, but they did well enough in the end, and so Maya, Marianne, and Aubrey left the hotel together after breakfast.
"So, what would you like to do first?" Maya asked.
Looking energized, Marianne considered the question. She had been here before, she remembered. There were places she wanted to go back to, and places she had never been to but had heard about through Georgie and Toph. A lot of the time though, she'd be stalled by the thought that her little sisters deserved to see those places, too, so maybe they needed to wait until another day, not this one...
"You know we can go to places more than once," Maya told her with a chuckle.
Emboldened by this reasoning, Marianne made her choice: she wanted to go to the aquarium. So, they went to the aquarium. The highlight there, as it should have been expected to be, was getting to see the turtles. They spent a good time just with those, in every other section, too, enough so that they spent the better part of that day at the aquarium.
They stopped for lunch while they were there and kept going after, until finally deciding it was time to move on... once they stopped at the gift shop. Maya kept thinking about what Lucas had said a couple weeks back, when they'd been packing, when she'd been so determined to close that one suitcase rather than to bring another. Oh, they had never been immune to the pull of souvenirs, and nowadays, to go anywhere near a store or a stand with their girls... They considered that they had been reasonable, per capita, but overall... They'd gone ahead and shipped those home before leaving each country, and this would be no different.
"What do you think? Time for a snack?" Maya asked, getting a look at Aubrey. They were going to have to pause somewhere anyway.
"Can we get ice cream?" Marianne asked.
"You bet we can," Maya accepted this at once.
Ice cream led them to catch some street performers nearby, and they stood by to watch for a while. Marianne was fascinated by all they did, and she danced around on the balls of her feet, looked into the stroller to see if Aubrey could see what was happening out there, and the bigger question may have been whether she understood what she saw, but she was awake and looking, and that might have been good enough for her big sister.
"That was so cool!" Marianne proclaimed when they finally moved on.
"It was, wasn't it?" Maya couldn't get enough of her daughter's giddy spirit today.
Much as both she and Lucas would do their best to get time with each of their girls individually every single day, it wasn't always so easy, so they'd have to settle for making those jumbled up family moments feel as special as could be. Now here she was today, and much as she would not discount the baby, it was her day alone with Marianne, and it was really good for the both of them. It used to be just this, just the two of them and her, and then Ella had come along, and then from one day to the next, the size of their family had nearly doubled, from four to seven. They regretted nothing, but then she'd be lying if she said that this day here with her once upon only child hadn't brought back loads of memories and hadn't felt just... so nice.
She recalled some of those memories with Marianne as they walked on, and she listened, all the while taking in their surroundings.
"Mommy, look!" she pointed all at once, and Maya stopped the stroller, following the pointing finger. It took her a moment to realize it wasn't just one thing she wanted her to see but more the view ahead of them as a whole. "I should have brought my diary," Marianne frowned to herself.
"Oh, we can take care of that, can't we? Come on, let's find ourselves some material," Maya guided her, and she followed at once.
They located a store where they could buy just what they'd need, and soon they were on a bench, both of them drawing while Maya kept an eye on the sleeping Aubrey. Marianne's skills had been expanding year to year, and the image she got going of the view was meticulous in its detail, so much so that, when Maya realized that it was about dinner time, she was still going at it. She kept at it when they'd landed at an outdoor table and had ordered food. If the search for materials for her daughter hadn't reminded her enough of her first trek out to Texas when she was thirteen, then watching her carry on working now only further drove it home.
Maya's younger self and Marianne were in no way having the same kind of day, but she knew too well that both those girls had something deep on their minds.
"Hey, pumpkin..." Maya quietly called for her attention and Marianne looked up from her drawing. It felt so much like she shouldn't even bring it up, like she was good, just now.
But... But still she'd have all these small reflexes in her at times, reflexes that showed plainly the trauma she had experienced, the fear she'd felt at the thought of her mother never coming home again. How long could she ignore it, try to lay a cover of sweetness... a mother-daughter day... and hope that all would become okay again, rather than to speak openly with her?
"You know, what happened after Aubrey was born..." she started, and there was that moment like a half second of panic flashing across her eyes. "That's all behind us now." She slowly nodded; yes, she knew. "All of us were really scared, and that's normal, alright? I still think about it, so does your dad, and your grandparents, your aunts, and uncles... The fear is not a bad thing, it's... life, when you love someone and something's wrong. That's in the past now. The present is right now, you and me and your baby sister right here. And the future hasn't happened yet... Sometimes it can be built from what happened in the past, like... In the past, I had some wonderful teachers who helped me become the person I am today, and thanks to them, I knew I was going to be a teacher, and I get to do what they did for me for other kids. But something like what happened after the baby came... It's not something you want to bring into the future, is it?"
Marianne shook her head. She had listened quietly all the while, and now that she could think on what her mother had told her... She hesitated.
"But I get scared now," she admitted, her little voice feeling like a twist at her mother's heart.
"I know, pumpkin," she reached out both hands across the table and Marianne reached back to clasp them. "You can always tell me, okay? Dad, too. We'll always listen."
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
