Chapter 5: Her Daughter's Mother

Meg couldn't fall asleep even though she was dead tired from the day's events. Between having Christina meet her grandparents, Stewie and Brian for the first time, feeding her and also later putting her to bed (which took several hours itself, because she seemed to notice she wasn't in her own crib and cried and cried and needed rocking and plenty of kisses), Meg thought she'd pass out the second her head hit the pillow. Her husband certainly did, and was lying towards her with a slight bit of drool on the edge of his mouth. She smiled, and being careful to not wake him, reached for her glasses and tiptoed towards the door.

Since she couldn't sleep anyway, she figured she'd head downstairs, make a cup of coffee and watch some TV for a while before going back to bed. It was something she used to do while she still lived there, mostly because her father had control over what they watched most of the time. Unfortunately, what tended to air late at night was either porn or in foreign languages (or foreign language porn), but the latter had the positive side-effect of improving her high school Spanish grade. Meg stopped briefly at the bottom of the stairs, because she noticed light coming from the kitchen... someone else was still up.

She didn't want to scare whoever it was, but at the same time was curious so she made as little noise as possible as she stepped into the kitchen. Leaned over the sink was her mother, who at first glance looked like she was washing her hair but a closer look revealed what looked like some kind of comb in her hand and a bit of hair in the other. But the most obvious thing was the box of hair dye sitting on the counter.

Red hair dye.

Meg always suspected that her mother's hair color wasn't natural but had never been able to prove it, and now she'd most definitely caught her in the act. Deciding to have a little bit of fun at her expense, she leaned against the table and yelled:

"A-ha!"

Lois jumped in fright and quickly turned around. "M... Meg! What are you doing up this late?"

"Can't sleep, I could ask you the same thing. So, is your hair starting to turn grey?"

"Yeah... yeah, that's it! I'm starting to get old!"

Meg eyed the bit of hair that her mother still held. "Let me see that."

Lois recoiled and tried to throw it down the drain, but Meg was easily able to grab it out of her hand. Most of it was red, as expected, but the roots were not grey or any of the other fifty shades thereof.

They were brown. Not just brown, but the same shade as Meg's and Christina's own. She'd always figured that she inherited her hair color from her father, but if what she theorized was true then it was just as likely she'd gotten it from her mother.

"What's this?"

Lois sighed and walked over to the coffee maker, measuring out two cups worth and turning it on. "I guess it's about time that someone else knows, probably for the best that it's you sweetie."

After the coffee was ready, Lois took a cup for herself and handed the other to her daughter and both sat next to each other at the table. Meg blew on the edge of her cup and took a quick sip before continuing.

"You dye your hair? I thought that a long time ago mom, it's nothing to be ashamed of."

"I'm not ashamed, and it's way more than you think, Meg. You know how different you were when you were younger?"

"Don't remind me."

"I was a lot different when I was younger. Self-confidence issues up the wazoo, problems making and keeping friends, you name it. I wasn't happy, but everything changed on my sixteenth birthday. They say that people should be themselves but I don't think that's very accurate, it's more like be who you want to be and to hell with everyone else. I turned my own life around, later met your father and then had you and I don't regret any of it. And even though you didn't do it exactly the same as me, you changed your life too, snagged someone that's hot and have a baby girl."

"Thanks, mom." said Meg. "And I didn't snag Mike, it just happened. And it's not a perfect marriage or anything like that, but I love him and wouldn't want to be with anyone else now."

"That means he's great in bed, isn't he?"

Meg's face flushed red as she grinned. "Oh yeah. Also, as you pointed out I have a baby, one that we planned for by the way so I think that's pretty obvious."

"Well, time for bed, night Meg!"

"Not so fast, mom. Way more than you think... you tried to turn this around onto me, just what were you going to say?"

"Hold on a second." said Lois with a sigh. "And you must promise to never tell anyone about this, it's a secret I've kept for over thirty years."

Lois opened a cupboard door and pulled out an old Triscuit box, then reached in and pulled out a small bag hidden at the bottom under the bag of (likely very stale) crackers.

"You keep stuff in there?" asked Meg.

"Nobody eats them and nobody throws it out, it's the perfect hiding spot."

Inside the bag were several pictures, which Lois placed down on the table for them to look at. She pointed towards more familiar ones that Meg had seen before, ones that showed what she looked like when she was sixteen up to the present. Red-headed, busty and quite beautiful.

"And these are what I looked like before I turned sixteen." she said, pointing towards the others on the left.

Meg stared at them and blinked several times, thinking at first that she was tired and seeing things, but as she focused on them further her mouth gaped.

She was looking at herself.

Well, not quite herself. Younger Lois was still slimmer and taller than she'd ever been and didn't wear a hat, but had a similar shirt and pants to what Meg herself used to wear but colored turquoise and tan respectively, was a brunette and wore glasses, and was considerably less endowed compared to her present form. But the resemblance was uncanny. Meg always knew that she'd taken after her mother but never realized until that moment just how much. She'd gotten some chubbiness from Peter's side but had lost a bit of it over the past seven years and had grown slightly taller, but the rest of it was clearly from Lois.

"When I turned sixteen I started dyeing my hair, wearing contacts and got breast implants. And it wasn't for anyone else's benefit, it was for me. It was something I needed to do, Meg. This is who I wanted to be, and I took the plunge and did it and I never looked back. My eyesight really started going down the crapper not long after you'd left for college though and I finally decided to get laser-eye surgery, now that was a mess."

"If by mess you mean you acted like an idiot then yeah, Chris and Stewie told me all about it later. Not that it'd have made any real difference if I'd been there, I'd probably have told you that faking blindness was wrong and you'd have ignored me and got caught anyway. And wait, I've seen pictures and videos of you when you were a kid and you always had red hair and never wore glasses."

"It's called editing, Meg, and takes all of five minutes to learn these days. Seriously, you went to college and should know stuff like that. Anyway, my hair was reddish when I was very young but it darkened as I got older. My family knows about it of course but they've never brought it up ever, it's almost like I didn't exist before that." said Lois. "I'm not living a lie or anything like that, sweetie. The difference is that I physically altered myself to make myself happier and change my life, while you basically showed everyone that you could do whatever you set your mind to and changed yours."

Meg, however, was more than a bit peeved over her mother's secret. "You and everyone else in this family gave me crap for years over my looks and it turns out you looked just like me! My god, what a hypocrite! Is this why you treated me like you did, because every time you looked at me you were reminded of who you used to be? And I'm not even bad looking at all, I was almost always just being compared to you! Do you know what that did to me, mom? It made me feel like I was worthless, like I didn't even matter! And if you're told something often enough you start believing it yourself, it wasn't until after I'd left here that I realized that I actually was pretty and guys did notice me! I don't like to think what my life would be like now if I hadn't turned it around like you said. I'd probably still be alone, always thinking about people better than me and with at least three or four cats in a small apartment somewhere."

Meg sighed and gulped down the rest of her coffee, slamming the cup on the table with a thud. "I'm going to bed."

"Meg..."

"What, mom?"

Tears ran down Lois's face and she was breathing heavily, her mouth quivering as she continued to look at Meg. The last time she'd seen her mother that saddened was during the infamous time that she'd told her family off for their abuse, which was one of the darkest moments in her life and one which she hoped would never happen again. As much as she sometimes lashed out at her mother, she'd never want to cut her out of her or her daughter's life. Meg felt herself start to tear up uncontrollably and began sobbing as well, and ran to hug her mother.

"I'm sorry, sweetie. So sorry for how things were before. We weren't the best parents-"

"That's an understatement."

"-and we're so proud of you! College graduate, married, cute little baby girl and you did it all without doing what I did. I... I still don't regret what I did, Meg, but the fact is that you didn't need to."

Both sat back down and after they'd calmed themselves down, Meg found that she really couldn't be or stay mad at her mother. Yes, it was a big secret and she was still extremely annoyed, but she was no longer the moody and somewhat psychotic teenager she once was. She had her own life and family, and wasting time on the past would accomplish nothing in the long run but hurting herself.

"Christina is probably going to look a lot like me... like us." said Meg. "She's already got that telltale nose."

"Peter's already started calling her Meg Junior."

"Yeah," Meg sighed, "I know. Oh, and speaking of dad, how did he never... you know, find out that you're not naturally red-headed?"

Lois, realizing what Meg was referring to, smirked.

"Smooth as a baby's bottom." she said, running her right hand over her left arm for added emphasis. "Used to dye it too, but it's a lot easier this way."

"I kind of guessed that, but I'm still a bit disgusted."

"Mothers tend to creep their daughters out with details about their sex lives sweetie, my mother did it with me and my sister, I did it to you and you'll do it with your daughter once she's old enough." said Lois. "The time will fly by before you know it and she'll be out the door and gone, and then she'll be bringing a baby back to your house to visit. Just don't end up wasting so much time like we did."

Meg suddenly let out a long yawn and looked at a nearby clock for the time. They had spent a good hour or so talking, which she figured was probably the longest they'd ever spent together. While things had gotten better in her later teenage and adult years, there was still a huge amount of time that was gone forever, filled with regret. She wouldn't make that mistake with her own children, and though they were often both loath to admit it her parents wished that they'd treated her better when she was younger.

"I won't, mom. We're going to be in Quahog for a few days... do you want to go somewhere together tomorrow for a while? Just you and me, I mean."

"Well, I have to take Stewie to Tae Kwon Do class tomorrow but after that, sure. I know just the place too, little coffee house a few miles away that opened a few years ago. One that I'm not banned for life from, either!"

Both Meg and Lois smiled. While they couldn't change the past, it still wasn't too late to be a better mother and daughter to each other than they were before, especially now that Meg was a mother herself. Plus, she wanted to hear more about Lois's early years, but given her mother chances are they'd end up gradually moving towards sex talk until it's all they'd be talking about. Not that Meg minded, however, because she had plenty of her own stories to tell... mostly about her husband, but a few flings she'd had in her college years before she'd met him were quite steamy as well.

After they'd said good night to each other and headed upstairs, Meg settled into bed next to her husband. And that time, she did pass out the second her head hit the pillow. She was closer to her mother than she'd ever been, and it felt good.