Sadie
Today is my fifteenth birthday. Maddie and her family and Daphne are coming over later. I can't wait to see my nieces Daisy and Claire. I hope Daph brings her new boyfriend. He's so hot!
I really love my sisters. They're a lot older than me, but they always let me hang out with them. They still do. I'm sure I was a pain in the neck when I was little, but they always tell me that their favorite thing to do was hang out with me.
I looked at the clock. 8:45. Late for me to be getting up. I'm the only early bird in this family. Although my parents are probably awake, doing the nasty. Ewww. I can always tell, because Mama will be all giggly and she looks all dewy-eyed. And Daddy, well, Daddy just looks all proud of himself. And then he's all kissy face with Mama. Gah. Where's that mental floss when you need it?
By the time I was in school, it was really just Mama, Daddy and me. Which was actually kind of nice, truth be told. They spoiled me, really. I think it was because they were older when I came along and they spent all their energy messing around with each other instead of worrying about me. I enjoy having them all to myself, though. Most of my friends are annoyed by their parents, but even though mine are a couple of goofballs, I really love them and I love hanging out with them.
Mama was a major country music superstar back in the day, but she's retired from performing now. She still sings at the Grand Ole Opry every now and then. I told her that makes her one of the "Grand Old People of the Opry" now. When I say that she always frowns and swats my arm and says she's not old. These days she spends her time managing her label, Highway 65, which is a pretty big deal in Nashville music circles. Daddy still plays around town some. Mostly he writes songs, though, and helps Mama run her label. I'm following in my sisters' footsteps. Mama and Daddy's too, of course. People say that I'm the most talented, but I don't know about that. It's surely in my blood, but beyond that, I think everyone in my family is crazy talented.
I love listening to Mama's old albums. She has such a sweet voice. She and Daddy wrote a lot of songs together and I swear they're always the best ones on the album. When they sing at home, which is a lot, those are always my requests. I wondered about why Daddy didn't want to go out on his own and why he stayed in Mama's band all those years. He had a couple of albums, one when he was really young, and one from when he was older, before he and Mama got married. I asked him once why he didn't have his own career, because he has an awesome singing voice, but he said he was happy doing what he was doing. I asked Mama and she just got all weird looking and said it was complicated.
I know that "complicated" means drama. I've found a lot of information on my parents, stuff they won't tell me because I'm "not old enough", so I do know about "complicated". I think Daddy stayed in Mama's band because he still loved her, even though she was married to Uncle Teddy. I know Daddy's an alcoholic, although he's been sober forever. I know that they were in a car accident together and Mama almost died. And I know that Mama fell in love with him when she was only a year older than me and that she never really stopped. That last part she told me. I'm just glad they got over all that drama before I came along. Maddie and Daphne told me a lot of stuff too, things Mama and Daddy don't know they told me. Not that it matters. I love them anyway.
Maddie's still performing but mostly around town. She is a super song writer and has so many number ones for other people, I've lost count. She doesn't like touring, since her girls came along, so she doesn't. Good thing her husband Jake is still one of the biggest country stars on the planet. My nieces are amazing. Daisy's almost eight and Claire is four. Mama said that as hard as Maddie fought to be a performer, she was so surprised that she gave it up. But she's got an awesome life now.
I think Daisy's going to be the next generation star in our family. She loves to sing and perform and she's even learning to play the guitar. Every time she comes over, she and Daddy sit together and he shows her chords and stuff. Mama tells Maddie that she's going to see what it's like now, but Maddie just laughs and says it's okay with her.
Daphne sings in a group called Wild Cowboy – two guys, two girls. They've won all kinds of awards. Daph is the best harmonizer there is. And gorgeous too. She's like a mini-Mama and Mama is still hot. She's not ready to settle down, she says, but this new boyfriend has been around a while, longer than the others, so who knows?
It's kind of fun being a part of this musical family. Everybody says I'm the "whole package". I sing, I write, I play. I've been writing songs since I was ten, good ones since I was twelve. When Daddy invited me to play with him at The Bluebird Café when I was thirteen, Maddie told me her inner teenager was having a tantrum. Mama and Daddy, and Uncle Teddy, wouldn't let her do anything like that until she was out of high school. She pretended to be pissed, but she was right there at the Bluebird cheering me on, with the biggest smile on her face.
I was sort of surprised that Mama let me do that and she was actually extra weird about it, even for her. But I think Daddy convinced her. I've always been a daddy's girl. Some of that, I think, is because I'm the only one he's been with from the beginning. I love the pictures of him holding me when I was born. There's a video too and I tease him because he's crying like a baby.
After I made my debut at the Bluebird, there was a lot of talk about us being the "First Family of Country Music". I always love singing with my sisters and I loved to have my parents sing to me and get to sing along with them as I was growing up. But I'm not really sure that I want that. I mean, I kinda want to go to college and be a journalist, or something. I hope that if I decide not to be a performer, they won't be mad.
I know that Maddie was Uncle Teddy's daughter until she was thirteen and then found out that Daddy was really her dad too. I don't really understand how it all happened, but everyone seems to be okay with it now, so I don't think about it much. Except that I feel bad sometimes for Maddie that she didn't grow up with Daddy, like I did. Because he's the best dad ever.
Okay, now I'm gonna tear up and I can't, because it's my birthday. I sit up a little in my bed because I can hear all this low talking out in the hall. And Mama's giggling. God, those two!
My door burst open. "Happy birthday, Sadie Faith!" Mama cries out, hurrying in to hug me, a huge smile on her face. I hug her back. She pulls back and looks in my face. "My baby. Fifteen years old already," she murmurs. I smile back at her. Mama is still so gorgeous. She still has that beautiful reddish-blonde hair she's always had, although she told me she does have to color over the little bit of gray that's there now. I always wished I'd gotten her hair color.
I pull away from her and swing my legs off the bed so I can get up. Daddy grabs me up in a big hug. He's so handsome, with his scruffy face and his hair kind of hanging over his forehead a little. "Happy birthday, sweetheart," he whispers in my ear. When he lets me go, I look up at him and he has tears in his eyes, like he does every year.
"Quit crying, Daddy," I scolded. "There's no crying on birthdays."
He smiled and then laughed. Mama stood up and he put his arms around her. "Thank you for Sadie bug," he said to her. Please stop, I thought. He looked back at me. "Birthday pancakes? Or are you too old for that?"
I shook my head and grinned at him. "I'm never too old for my daddy to make me pancakes on my birthday," I told him and he beamed. As he turned and walked out of my bedroom to the kitchen, I made a promise to myself that, even if one day I didn't like pancakes anymore, I would always let him make them for me on my birthday.
That afternoon, I wandered into the den and pulled out my baby album. I did this every year. It always made me laugh, because Mama was the worst at technology. Actually Daddy was even worse than her, so I guess she wasn't really the worst. But that meant she had old fashioned pictures. I had to admit, though, there was something kind of sweet about a hard bound baby album that I could look at without sitting in front of a computer.
Even though I'd looked at the album a ridiculous number of times, I never got tired of it. The very first picture was a picture of Mama with the ultrasound picture of me. She was grinning like a fool. She told me once it was because the doctor told her I was a girl and that made her happy. Then there were several pictures of Mama, captioned "4 months" through "9 months", where she was standing in profile, so that you could see her belly grow. She always had a big smile on her face. The very last one was always my favorite. She was wearing her hair up in a bun, with tendrils of hair framing her face. She told me that she had her hands clasped under her stomach, because I couldn't quite tell just what she was doing with the hand I could see. Her face was scrunched up in a cute smile. I was born less than 12 hours later, three weeks early. She had confided in me that she was already in early labor when Daddy took the picture, but she hadn't told him because she didn't want to freak him out.
There were a few pictures of Mama and Daddy together when she was pregnant. In one, Daddy was standing behind her, with his arms wrapped around her and she was leaning back into him. I told him he looked like a goofball in the picture because he had this silly grin on his face. He got all misty-eyed and told me that it was the best time of his life and that made me feel all teary too. There were a bunch of pictures when I was born, with Mama, with Daddy, and with Maddie and Daphne.
Mama walked in and, when she saw what I was doing, came over and sat by me, putting her arm around me. I moved a little so that I could lean my head on her shoulder. "You were such a pretty baby, Sadie," she said. "And a pretty young lady."
"Tell me about the day I was born," I said.
"Haven't you heard that a million times?" Mama asked.
"I'm only fifteen. It can't be that many."
Mama squeezed me. "Okay, one more time then." She flipped the pages of the book to the picture of her holding me in the hospital. "So, as you know, you were three weeks early. Which was a very good thing, because it was summertime and it was very hot and being pregnant in the summer is not fun."
I twisted my head back to look up at her. "So I was a good baby right from the start," I teased with a smile.
She smiled back and kissed me on my forehead. "You were. So, anyway, I woke up that morning with a horrible backache and not too much later, I started having contractions."
"But you didn't tell Daddy, right?"
She raised her eyebrows. "If you know the whole story, why am I telling you?" She smirked.
"Carry on," I said, with a wave of my hand. About this time, Daddy walked into the room and sat down on the other side of me. He and Mama smiled those lovey-dovey smiles they like to do at each other. "Story, please," I said. Gah. There's time for that later. Much later.
Mama laughed. "Anyway, I knew it would be a while, so I just waited. Since it was three weeks before your due date, I wasn't sure at first if they were real or not, but I wasn't done with your nursery, so I decided to work on that."
Daddy sighed dramatically. "Yeah, your mama made me help her with all this stuff to get ready and the whole time, you're fixing to come."
"Well, I wasn't completely sure," Mama countered.
"She hid it from me," Daddy said, but his voice was teasing.
"Yes, I did, because I knew you'd panic and want to go right over to the hospital. And then all we would have done was wait. So, anyway. Sometime late in the afternoon was when I knew it was time to go to the hospital and that's when I told your daddy and he did panic."
Daddy gasped dramatically. I loved how they told the story. "You could have had Sadie in the truck," he exclaimed. He looked at me. "We barely got in the delivery room before you were born."
Mama shook her head, but she was smiling. "That's not true. It was still at least another hour and a half before you were born. Long enough to call your sisters so they were there before you were." She flipped another couple of pages to pictures of Maddie and Daphne holding me. "They fought over who was going to hold you first and who was going to hold you the longest and who you were going to be closer to. It was kind of hilarious. I think I got to hold you for about five minutes before your daddy snatched you away from me." She looked at Daddy then. "And then I couldn't get you back from your sisters. I didn't think I was ever going to get my baby back."
I laughed. "When did you?"
Mama got this indignant look on her face. "I think when everybody went home for the night. Which was ridiculous." Then she shrugged. "But then it was just the three of us." She gave Daddy that moony smile again. "I was so happy."
I looked at Daddy and his eyes were all teary again. "Don't," I warned.
He leaned down and kissed me. "It's hard, bug. It was a big day for me."
I took a deep breath. "Well, if everyone is going to be all weepy about it, we can stop." Just then, I saw a loose picture sticking out of the back. I pulled it out and saw that it was a copy of that picture from Maddie's wedding where I was looking like a goofball for the camera. "Mama," I whined. "Why is this in here?"
Mama took it from me and grinned. "I love this picture! You look so cute here."
I rolled my eyes. "I look like a goofball."
Daddy laughed. "Yes, but you're our goofball. And we love you very much."
And then they did what they used to do a lot when I was a little girl, something they still always did on my birthday. Together they leaned in and each one kissed me on one cheek and then they nuzzled me with their noses. And we all laughed together.
I totally love these crazy people.
