Wow, I can't believe I am able to pdate this again. I bet no one remembers this story, but I am going to post this anyway. I hate unfinished stories and I want this to be finished at one point or the other as well.
Updating was only possible though because of one and only Steph who betaed this for me and knows now that I will never be able to forget the word "apprentice" ever again. Don't ask why, it's a long and horrible story, including a dictionary, some german words and only one translation option.
I hope you like this chapter, I hope you will review (thank you all for the encouraging reviews!) and because I am updating I want to point out that some other nice authors have organized a GG Fanfiction chat-a-thon. There are a lot of great FF authors who are willing to answer all your questions concerning their stories, the writing... So if you have something you always wanted to ask, go to the chat-a-thon.
If you need more infos, and I am sure you will, go to my authirs profile and et the link to the homepage.Tell them what author you always wanted to question. It's a great idea, it's for a good cause and where else can you see Mag68 beg?! Go there and check it out!
Chapter 5
You used to captivate me by your resonating light
Now I am bound by the life you left behind
I am standing in front of the entry way now and stare at the door and the gravel walk at whose end the brick building is standing.
When the kids were still small we used to come here with them.
I can still see Toni when he was just about a year old toddling along the way and falling on his butt. Of course he started screaming bloody murder right away, while Layna ran ahead and always stood back up whenever she fell.
It is strange how two people can bring three so completely different kids into the world; or five, actually. You can't say that Rory got a lot from Chris or that April has much of Anna. By now I am somehow convinced that kids don't get much from their parents, besides their looks.
I remember that Rory quoted an author when she spoke at the funeral for Lane and Zach's youngest son, who died shortly after his birth. I can't remember the name of the man, but I still remember what she said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
Oh no, I couldn't just memorize it right away. Me, Luke Danes and famous quotes? Lorelai used to quote it a lot after the kids had moved out.
After Josh had moved out, something happened which we had never expected and with which we couldn't deal with at first. The house got silent and we were suddenly alone and didn't know what to do.
We missed our kids and sometimes I caught myself red handed calling one of the five and asking them how they were doing. I always told them that Lorelai wanted me to call, so that they wouldn't know how much I missed them.
When Rory had moved out and Lorelai had still been alone, she had coped with the loneliness her own way. She had invited me, for example, to a movie night, because I had such knowledge about movies. She just didn't want to be alone.
April never really lived with us and when she moved out at Anna's we finally saw her more often, because she went to Yale as well. It's a lot easier to drive an hour to Yale than it is to fly to New Mexico. Very much to Anna's chagrin, April spent a lot of time with us during her college years and played with her brothers and her sister or chatted with Lorelai and me.
We were always happy when she stopped by spontaneously.
After she finished her studies, she moved to Japan, which was very hard on us because we barely saw her back then. But it helped her a lot and she was able to spend day and night in a laboratory. I will never be able to understand how I got a scientifically talented daughter.
After she came back, she started to work for a company in Silicon Valley. I never really got what exactly she is doing there, but she likes her job and I think that is the most important thing.
Her husband Fred does something similar and my granddaughter Athena, named after the goddess not the heir, inherited her parents love for science. Maybe it's just interesting to her, to stick with my former theory.
Anthony has always been, well, Anthony. He was never really good at school and never interested in any subject, except art.
Lorelai and I once tried to find someone in our family who was a talented artist, but we couldn't think of anyone. Looks like Anthony is the first.
When he was still a kid, he used to sit in his room and draw for hours while his sister and his brother were playing outside.
If you wanted to punish him, grounding him or taking his allowance away didn't help at all. You had to take his pens- that was the worst thing for him.
Shortly before Richard died, he and Emily suggested that Anthony should go to a special art boarding- school, but Anthony didn't want to go.
One could think that he was a mama's boy, but he wasn't. It was me he followed like a shadow, sat beside me in the diner and watched me work while he was drawing, and it was me he came to when he was sad and wanted to be soothed.
For Layna though, like for Rory, the sun rose and set over Lorelai. She wasn't only her little clone but she was imitating her in everything she did.
She was two when she had already learned all of Lorelai's quips and used them in every possible and impossible situation. She even used the obligatory "dirty", although she didn't really understand what it meant.
She was a lot calmer than Lorelai though, so I still have hope that she might be my daughter as well. She didn't crawl out the windows as a teenager, she didn't drink and she finished her schooling without getting pregnant.
What Tony and Layna had spared us, Josh completely made up for. It was because of him that Lorelai and I got a whole new appreciation for Richard and Emily.
He bolted the very first day of school. Suddenly he was standing in the middle of the diner and told me that he had decided school was not for him and he didn't want to go there anymore.
I hadn't been a big fan of school myself but I went there at least, and it was only because I was scared of my father.
But not Josh.
Like a duck takes to water he ditched school, which didn't go unnoticed in Stars Hollow. The calls of Patty, Babette or Taylor that they had found him somewhere in town while he should be in school became routine. We would go pick him up, punish him, take him back to school, and a few days later the whole procedure would start all over.
Once I told Lorelai that he reminded me a lot of Jess, but she didn't want to hear that, because she and Jess never learned to get along.
Josh wasn't stupid and his grades were good, but he still didn't want to go to school.
Unlike his siblings, Toni studied art and Layna economics, he didn't think about going to College when he graduated from High School.
Lorelai tried to talk him into it, but finally he admitted that he had already talked with Tom and that he wanted to be a carpenter.
Back then I was actually relieved that Emily and Richard had already passed away, because I think that decision alone would have killed them. We accepted his decision, and after he had finished his apprenticeship, he studied architecture. Today he runs the only architecture company that ever existed in Stars Hollow.
Toni started to work for a publishing house and he is still working there today. He is illustrating kid's books and it is always funny when he and Rory meet and talk about books, because they talk about the same subject but never get what the other is really talking about.
It's the happiest time for us when all our kids visit with their families.
Rory and Jordan. April, Fred and Athena. Toni and Lisa with Caleb. Layna and Adam with Lorelai and William as well as Josh with his wife Clara and his daughters Catherine and Julia and son Lucas. I can't even begin to tell you how long I tried to talk them out of the name Lucas, but as always he wouldn't listen!
With Layna and her daughter it was different. Because Rory never had kids. I think Lorelai brainwashed Layna into continuing the tradition as soon as she knew she was expecting a girl. Lorelai never admitted it, but I know her.
I am happy that all five got what they wanted in life. Layna is happy that she is running the Dragonfly together with Martha now.
I am still standing in front of the entrance and slowly step one foot in front of the other. I am freezing. I should really go in.
TBC
