All familiar characters belong to Janet. Only Olive and the mistakes are mine.
Having spent the majority of my time with Julie here in Miami, I knew the location of every baby and child-friendly attraction in a fifty-mile circle around the city. As she got older, my GPS expanded to include malls, movie theaters, and entirely too many pizza places. Coincidentally, those are all Stephanie's preferred hangouts ... during a Jersey winter. Winter in Miami meant 70 degree weather and actual sunshine that isn't a precursor to a massive snowstorm. My wife wanted to soak up as much sun as she could before we head back to the salt-crusted vehicles, slush puddles, and gray snowbanks lining the roads, which are all awaiting us back in Trenton.
Steph hearing the slogan ... "Where humans are caged and monkeys run wild!" had our afternoon with Julie instantly planned. I do agree that it has a sense of irony to it. Mine and Stephanie's careers are built on caging humans. And there being various primates running beside, above, and around, us would hold Olivia's attention for longer than I'll last. Steph and I helped Olive finish her lunch and I cleaned her face, hands, three-quarters of her high chair, and a large area of floor around it.
Steph took over from there and changed her diaper and switched out her once white 'Badass Baby' onesie that's now heavily sweet potato-splotched, for clean clothes for her big day with her sister. After careful consideration, Steph and Olive decided on elastic-waist white jeans with heart-shaped back pockets, paired with an all over blue and white-striped short-sleeve top that has two tiny bows on the edge of each sleeve.
I've never given a fuck about clothes, aside from them being necessary and needing to be practical, but missing out on the day-to-day details of Julie's life from birth until she was old enough for her own cell with a direct line to me, had me trying to memorize every moment of Olive's life so my relationship with her isn't laced with the same regrets I've had to work through and make up to Julie.
The smile my oldest daughter gave me when she opened the Martine home's door, let me believe she's forgiven me completely for not being able to be the kind of father she deserved until I was back in the States for longer than a week and got mostly settled in Jersey. I received an immediate hug to complement the smile. Our past shared-hesitation is just that ... in the past. As she called out to Ron to say I'm here and she's about to leave, she waved at Stephanie who had her head sticking partially out of the passenger side window.
"Yay! I get Olive all to myself," Julie said, "if the parents are sitting in front."
"That's why Stephanie's in the front seat. We figured you'd prefer making Olivia laugh rather than talk to us on the way there."
"We're stopping for Pastelitos first, right? Steph pretty much promised we'd do that."
"Yes, we're stopping. Your gauntlet was thrown down and she wasted no time picking it up."
"That's right, Jules," my wife added, as we got to the car. "We're getting doughnuts, too, just for a proper face-off. Hey, did your Dad and I not get the memo about what to wear today?"
"What do you mean?" Julie asked her.
"You'll know when you see your sister," I explained.
Unbeknownst to her, or us, Julie had chosen to wear white jean shorts and a blue t-shirt with a yin and yang symbol that had the words ... "LIFE IS BALANCE, PROTECT AND PRESERVE" circling it. The difference was minor, but Julie had on white sneakers instead of the sandals that are currently covering Olivia's baby feet ... the same sandals that lasted only two minutes after we got to the Long Island beach for a day with her Uncles Cal and Bobby.
I opened the back door for Julie and I could tell she had to physically stop herself from covering her ears as Olivia shrieked a girgly and very excited 'Hiiii ... eeeey!' ... turning the one syllable 'Hi' greeting into a solid four syllable, 140 decibel sisterly acknowledgment.
A/N: The Manoso family's intended destination and its slogan are based on 'Monkey Jungle' that's in Miami. Julie's t-shirt I saw online.
