March 5th 2023

Chapter 64
We Grow By A Decade

The nearer they came to the month of May that year, Maya had... many things on her mind, sure, but one of them had started to inch to the top, especially as it drew nearer. Every year, at this time, a night would come to gather graduates of the past, to reunite them ten, twenty years later, if not more, and it would be kind of fascinating to see them go by. Maya herself had had her ten year reunion... oh, already several years back, strange as that sounded. She was nearer to her twentieth anniversary there than she was to her tenth.

For the most part, every year would bring a smile to her face, as she'd be part of those who helped set up the gym for reunion nights. This year... This year was special to her, and from here on out, there was no doubt, every year would be special for that same reason. She had celebrated ten years as a teacher just last summer, and now this year's tenth reunion attendees would be the Class of 2028... her very first graduates. She may have only had them in her class for a single year, but it didn't make them any less special to her. They'd left their mark on her as, she knew, she had left a mark on many of them, some more than others.

It was the first year where she'd have a connection with the graduates. Of course, she would be there. She and Lucas had taken to look at it as an extra prom night every year… either that, or a second part to a prom ten years back. As soon as they suggested any of this in their daughters' presence, they were as good as bound to bring out photos for all of them to look at, to see what their parents had been up to at the time. They'd seen images from that time already, many times over, but they hadn't seen these, and they were fascinated by them for more than one reason.

Seeing their parents in their prom wear, even as chaperones, made them happy. It also boggled their young minds to look at these pictures, at any picture really, and be reminded that none of them had been born at the time except for Ella, and she had not even known either of them back then. These were their parents, but they weren't parents yet, not when those pictures had been taken.

"But we wanted to be," Lucas assured them all, especially the first of them to have come along, their firstborn, who sat tall in his lap as they looked at the images.

Marianne did not go and perch in either of her parents' laps nearly as often as she used to, hardly ever anymore, but… but then February had happened, and the accident had happened, the loss… She was in school again, she rode her horse again, she did all the things she used to do. But she was by no means over it. None of them were, and if any of them were able to carry on as though they were mostly normal, then that was their journey, and none of it was wrong or disrespectful to the memory of Melinda Friar.

Still, where Marianne was concerned, there were these periods, days where she struggled with her grief more than others, and on those days, she would cling to those who brought her most comfort, like her parents, and her big sister, her grandparents, and great grandparents… By now, they knew to recognize her levels for who she reached to when she was at home. If she went to her mother, it was a worse day, one where she'd feel the need to cry. It wasn't that she thought her father wouldn't realize this, but some part of her might have wanted to spare him this, wouldn't have wanted to get him started, too. Maya took this understanding as seriously as she would anything. If her baby girl came and sat with her, sat over her, she would drop whatever she was doing and hold her, and wait, and when the tears would start, she'd do her best to help her ride them out, knowing all the while that she was in a very safe place to let them out.

That day, with the pictures, she'd gone to sit with her father. If she went to him, they knew that, while it was still, of course, a big feelings day, it was one where she mostly felt quiet, closed in, and she needed to be held by someone who'd feel it with her, and that was her dad. He barely had to see her coming and he'd know, like he could sense her. She came, and she sat with him, and if he had to go anywhere, she would follow him if she could.

The notion had her parents thinking of little Toby, when he'd first been placed with his foster parents, August and Milena Matthews. It had them thinking of what sadness might have existed in the child before he'd been placed with them. They were thinking about him, about his parents, as they looked at the pictures from prom, ten years prior. The two of them had been of that graduating class, after all. The kids in those pictures had different hopes for their future together, different, but no less wonderful than where they ended up. They'd encountered obstacles along the way, heartbreaks, and disappointments, but they had made it on to the other side, and they'd found a new road ahead of them, one that would see their dreams come true after all. Their former teacher got to see it, every time she saw them, with little Toby, with Lilah now alongside him… When they took them in, they gave them a home, but as they kept them, raised them, they were given a far greater gift.

When they would all gather with their former classmates, Toby and Lilah would be just about all August and Milena wanted to talk about. It wouldn't be that they had nothing else to show for their lives, far from it. But they'd wanted to be parents, wanted to be a family, and after taking more winding roads to get there than they'd thought they would, the destination left them fulfilled and with hearts overflowing. Every little piece of the days they shared with their children that they let others in on… it honored them.

With August and Milena, it was impossible not to look to the latter's older brother, Tony Janacek. Whether through that connection or his relationship to dear family friend Cecilia Winstead-Jones or how he'd kept in touch via the occasional letter, he very much remained someone in the wide sphere of people firmly pressed into Maya's mind and so in her family's minds, too, to some extent.

And he was an artist. He'd been one for as long as she'd known him, sure, but of her very many students, only a small portion could be said to have gone on to live off their art, and Tony was one of them, the first of them among her former students, and maybe that had been the very first thing that had set him apart in her mind. How could she be anything but deeply, deeply proud of him for this? She got to follow his career as it grew and expanded, as he gained praise for his work… Some of it she got to hear through his sister, some from his brother-in-law, and some from his bride, the soon-to-be Mrs. Janacek. Cecilia hadn't actually decided whether she'd take the name yet, attached as she was to this piece of her mother and father, one she had lost when she'd been just a young girl, and the other only a year prior, after a short illness had swept him away.

It might all have been decided by now if not that they'd pushed the wedding back when they'd found themselves expecting, just a couple of months ago. The pregnancy was still early on, and the wedding would have happened when Cecilia would have been much nearer to full term. She did not want that to be the case, and neither did Tony. Cecilia wasn't exactly at risk, going through this pregnancy, but there were some concerns, things everyone wanted to keep an eye on to ensure that both she and the baby got through it alright. That meant the least stress and strain they could manage… which discouraged from pushing forward with the wedding at this time, too.

Oh, but to see them as they walked through the gym throughout reunion night, the delay didn't bother them in the slightest. They knew they would get there in the end and, in the meantime, the promise of this baby… it was more than enough. Cecilia was very truly glowing, and Tony had that glimmer in his eye that Maya knew very well as inspiration born from joy. New fatherhood would produce marvels out of him, she was certain.

"Tell me something," Lucas asked as the two of them sat back and watched the reunited former classmates, mingling together, spouses and other significant others by their sides whether they, too, were part of that graduating class or not.

"What?" Maya asked, ready for his query even as she smiled, watching Milena and Cecilia talking happily, she suspected, of children both present and upcoming, even as August and Tony had their own conversation… potentially on the same topic.

"If you could go back, if you could have had them for the full four years, would you do it?" Lucas asked, and now she turned to him, briefly considering the question before turning to look at her former students again. She might have thought that this would be a difficult question, but the answer came a lot swifter than anticipated.

"No," she shook her head, and she took a moment to reflect before confirming her choice. "I wouldn't." She paused, and she chuckled. She didn't know why, but that thought made her happy. "But you knew that, didn't you?"

"I might have had my suspicions," he admitted.

"Mm mm…" Maya squinted at him, and he just smiled, tipped his head to her. Go on, tell me. "It's kind of like with Ella, isn't it?" she told him, and his smile said it all. Yes, he knew just what she meant. As much as there was a part of them that would love so much to have gotten to be involved with their big girl, to have known her, when she'd been little, that just wasn't their story, all of them together, no. They'd become a family when they'd become a family because that was when they'd been meant to get there, and there was no trading that in.

And there was no trading in that one brief year she'd had with the class of 2028. They were only ever going to get that one year, and they'd known that. Now they were here, ten years later, and while most of the teachers in attendance had been with them for the full four years, there was no missing that their art teacher, in her short stint among them, had made a very real and long-lasting impression. They saw her, and there was no suggestion that her renown in the music world led the charge. They were excited, thrilled to see Mrs. Friar, not Maya Hart the singer and songwriter. Some of them had stayed in touch through letters, others had not seen or spoken to her since the day they'd been handed their diplomas, and the rest fell somewhere in the middle, but wherever that was, the result was the same. They were as glad to see her as she was to see them. Maya and Lucas both knew, by the end of that night, that they'd now have one more thing to look forward to, as school years would draw to an end.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners