So, I'm finally back for writing! I hope you all had some wonderful holidays and that you are looking forward to the new year!
Here's the next chapter, I hope you like i!
When Sheldon had entered Amy's mother's house for the very first time some years ago, he immediately had had the feeling that he had seen it before. Not because he already had been there actually or because he believed in some kind of déja-vu-stuff (of course he didn't!), but it somehow had seemed very, very familiar to him. Maybe it was because there was nothing that surprised him at all. Every piece of furniture, every picture on the wall, even the books and decoration in the shelf, everything seemed to be the way that you would expect it from a woman like Mrs. Fowler.
Today it was the same, again. He entered the living room and only could secretly marvel how remarkably unremarkable it was:*
The room's layout was a rectangle (the aspect ratio of the walls approximately 2:1) with a seating corner at the one end and an eating area which had a door to the kitchen at the other end.
The walls were painted in a light yellow, on the floor there were some grey marbled tiles and the ceiling was covered with wooden panels (probably birch). There were three windows in the room, one at the left side where the couches were standing, one at the right side at the eating table and one in the middle, in direct opposition to the door that he was standing in and that was leading to the narrow hallway. The windows were decorated with white curtains that were laid in accurate pleats and that lower edges formed a concave bow with its highest point directly in the middle of the window and drapes made from a light grey shiny material hanging at both sides of the windows and above the white curtains, where it was draped in three convex bows.
While Amy went into the kitchen to help her mother with preparing a cake (something that was exclusively a woman's task in Patricia's opinion) Sheldon took the car seat with Rosalind inside and went to the seating corner, where the coffee table made from glass was set with a teapot and four matching plates and tea cups.
He sat down on one of the beige leather sofas, paid attention to not sit on the sofa pillow covered with the same fabric the grey drapes were made of, that was put there in a very… decorative way (oh, he could perfectly imagine how the hand of Amy's mother had whizzed down like a karate chop to create that crease in the middle of the pillow) and took a glance at the huge beech wood cabinet in front of him. A flatscreen tv, a row of books: a lexicon in 20 volumes, a bible, a dictionary, some travel guides, a picture book of the USA National Parks, an educational guide for grandparents (he shortly frowned his brows, when he saw it, that hadn't been there at his last visit), a blue vase on a white crocheted lace doily, a china cat figurine, another vase (white with a golden rim), in the glass cabinet some more of the china that was standing at the coffee table. Nothing interesting, nothing that he hadn't had seen in other living rooms, yet, nothing that told anything interesting about Patricia's personality.
"Sheldon!" There was Amy's Dad's voice (Peter, he still had to get used to call him at his first name), who lived apart from Amy's mother in his own apartment, but who still was friends with her and who used to be around when Amy and Sheldon were visiting her. Sheldon raised his head and started to stand from the couch. "Stay, stay…" Peter gestured with his hands and sat down next to his son in law. "Nice to see you, again! And that little cutie of course!" Cautiously, he swung Rosy's car seat a little back and forth. "So, how are things going?"
"What exactly do you mean?"
"Well, how are you getting along with your task as a father? Are there problems you need help with or advice?"
"Oh, there are some problems in deed. The first one is that Rosy just doesn't want to adjust to the three hours time schedule for drinking. And that causes the second problem: her bathroom schedule is practically not existing. Can you believe that? She soils her diapers in the most inappropriate situations. Oh, and then the burping and vomiting, when will this kid learn table manners? Furthermore…"
"Peter, you forgot to set the saucers on the table! Where shall we put our soiled tea spoons after stirring our tea?" Patricia who had arrived at the seating area with a bowl of whipped cream in her hands, looked at her former husband as if he had lost his mind, shook her head, put the bowl on the coffee table, went to the glass cabinet and took out four saucers.
"I'm sorry, Sheldon, normally I use to control these things before the guests arrive, but today I just couldn't, because it took me so long to whip the cream, somehow it just didn't work properly."
"Maybe the cream was to warm, Mum? It needs to be cold, otherwise the fat that is dissolved in the cream is not crystalline but liquid and when you whip it you will create butter and buttermilk instead of whipped cream."
"Do you really think I forgot to cool the cream, Amy? I'm doing this job now for more than fourty years." Patricia's voice was slightly trembling.
"Amy, why don't you put that cake on the table and sit down next to your old father?" Peter smiled at Amy while scratching his gray beard and tapped on the seat next to him.
With a questioning look at her mother, Amy put the cake on the table, went to the seat next to her Dad and leant her head against his shoulder.
Patricia was filling the plates with cake, careful to not let any crumbles fall on the table. "Amy, sit straight, please," she reprimanded her daughter.
In that moment, Rosalind started crying heavily, Patricia jumped startled and stared at her granddaughter. "What is wrong with her?" she asked concerned, while Peter quickly and unnoticed by her put some crumbs, that had fallen from her plate, into his mouth.
"I don't know!" Sheldon shrugged his shoulders and took Rosalind out of her car seat. Immediately she stopped crying. "Probably she just wants to sit on my lap."
"But how can you eat your cake then?" Patricia asked him.
"Don't worry, I can feed him", Peter suggested and took Sheldon's pastry fork.
"No, no, nobody feeds me, I'm not Howard", Sheldon warded off and took the pastry fork cautiously out of Peters hand. "But I wouldn't mind if Amy could eat my raisins, because I really don't like them..." He didn't dare to look into Patricia's eyes when he said that.
"So, Mum, you've got a new phalaenopsis orchid, I see. It looks nice", Amy tried to save the awkward situation.
"Yes, your father gave it to me today, he got it as a gift at the hardware store, when they were changing the assortment in the garden department."
"I simply was at the right place at the right time", Peter appeased with a shy smile and a shrug of his shoulders.
Amy smiled broadly at her father. "You're my bargain hunter hero, Dad!"
"And you know what", Peter now added with a proud sparkle in his eyes "That's not the only bargain I did today. I also got three packages of washers for the price of two and a head screwdriver for only 50 Cent."
"Who needs head screwdrivers nowadays?" Sheldon asked with frowned eyebrows. He couldn't remember to have seen head screws for a while.
"I use them all the time. Because you can use a head screwdriver for a phillips head screw, but not vice versa." And sometimes" now he leaned close to Amy and whispered "you can even fix a big Torx screw with it." Amy nodded approvingly and whispered back "You know, sometimes I just use an unfolded scissors for fixing a screw, but don't tell Sheldon or Mum!"
"What kind of secrets do you two have?" Sheldon asked and bent forward to have a better look into Amy's face. In that moment, Rosalind took advantage of the situation, grabbed one of the raisins on Sheldon's plate, that he had picked out of his cake and put it quickly in her mouth.
"For heaven's sake!" Patricia shouted. "Rosy has put a raisin in her mouth!"
"What? But she's not old enough to grip such little things with her forefinger and thumb!" Sheldon protested.
"But she did! She used her whole hand! Take it out, before she swallows it."
"But I haven't disinfected my hands!"
"Oh my goodness, I don't know what to do! What shall we do?" Patricia was in panic.
"Amy, what shall we do?" Sheldon was in slight panic, too. A raisin had approximately the same size as a peanut (of course "approximately" was very much dependent on the magnitude that someone would underlie, but even if he was a quick thinker, he didn't have time for thinking about that now…) and peanuts were absolutely dangerous for babies.
"Let me see…" Peter had put his finger in Rosalind's mouth. "There's nothing. I guess she's swallowed it. Did you swallow the raisin?" He looked at Rosy questioning, but she just grinned.
"Good heaves, shall we call a doctor? She's not old enough for solid food. And what if Peter had dangerous germs at his hands?"
"Mum, relax, everything is alright, it was just a raisin, it did not get stuck in her throat, she didn't swallow it the wrong way and I'm sure Dad has washed his hands before eating."
Patricia breathed in deeply. "Well, you are the mother, you decide. But I need a drink now." She stood, went to the cabinet, opened a door and took out a bottle of liquor and a little glass. "Does anybody else need a drink, too?" Everybody was shaking their heads.
"Oh my, that was a shock!" Patricia sat down on the couch, slightly shaking and took little sips from the liquor.
The others didn't really know what to say.
Sheldon immediately had taken the left-over raisins from his plate, swallowed them himself (his bad conscience for bringing his daughter into danger far outweighed his aversion against dried and sulphuretted grapes), and hugged Rosalind a little tighter to his chest, half to prevent her from doing another nonsense, half because of relief that nothing bad had happened to her. Peter sighed softly and patted Patricia's knee, as this was something he knew would happen some day and Amy was slightly in shock because she'd never seen her mother drinking alcohol before.
"You know, I'm always afraid that something could happen, but I'm just not able to prevent everything. Had I known that Sheldon would pick out the raisins and that Rosy would be able to grab them, I would have baked another cake. I blame myself so much!"
"No, Mum, it's not your fault!"
"No, it's not your fault!" Sheldon repeated after a short moment of consideration and Amy looked at him gratefully.
"Mum, for heaven's sake, why are you so frightened of everything? And is your fear the reason why you didn't give me any liberties in the past?"
"Actually, that's why we're here, because we wanted to ask you why you always were so strict in Amy's education." Sheldon tried to support her.
"Sheldon, what… don't…" Amy was shaking her head angrily.
"It's alright, Amy." Patricia answered after a while. "Yes, I was strict with you because of fear. Too strict, maybe."
"Not maybe."
"Sheldon!" Amy looked angrily at him, again. But at the same time, she felt relieved and thankful that he helped her to confront her mother with the past.
"Oh, Amy… " Patricia sighed and her gaze went empty, her thoughts lingering on a memory long, long time ago. "I just wanted to protect you, that's all," she whispered finally, her eyes still staring at a point on the non-existing horizon.
"Protect me from what?" Amy asked.
"From everything that can be dangerous for a young girl's body, mind and soul, of course."
"What is that in your opinion?"
"Isn't that obvious? Look at all those failed girls around you, darling. Instead of studying and following the laws of the Lord they spend their time with vanities and silly talk and trash TV. They start having affairs with worthless men who don't care about marriage and children and only have interest in…" she hesitated for a moment and then turned up her nose "fleeting fun."
She paused again, then she continued, her voice had become embittered. "And then, one day, when the girls don't pay attention, they become pregnant out of wedlock and the fathers suddenly disappear."
"But Mum, how could you think that this could happen to me?!"
"Who would have thought that this could happen to Katrina, your aunt?" For some reason, her voice became shrill and she emphasized the word "aunt" in a strange, sarcastic way.
"I didn't know she ever was pregnant," Amy whispered. "Has she lost the child before it was born or…" Amy didn't dare to ask if the cousin she never had heard of before had died or been given to another family.
"No, the baby was born and the person is still alive," Patricia answered in a strange voice.
"So, I have an unknown cousin? Why did I never meet him – or her?" Amy was confused and slightly angry.
"No, you don't have an unknown cousin, Amy." Patricia sighed deeply before she continued speaking. "Katrina is –" her voice broke off, she couldn't speak anymore.
"Amy, Katrina is Patricia's biological mother, your grandmother." Peter finished the sentence for his former wife.
"What?" Amy's eyes started to fill with tears. She couldn't believe what she just had heard. "Why? I don't understand… Why did nobody ever tell me?"
"Katrina was only fourteen years old. Nobody was supposed to know it, even not the relatives," Peter tried to explain it. "Katrina and her mother even left the country for one year to disguise everything. Officially, Katrina was attending a special school in Great Britain, while in reality, she just spent her pregnancy at the house of an old friend of her mother's."
"Even I didn't know it for a very long time," Patricia sniffed now. "When my father died, I was a young girl back then, he told me that in reality, he was my grandfather, that my mother was my grandmother and my older sister Katrina was my mother!" She stopped talking for a while and only sniffed silently. Nobody in the room dared saying a word. Rosalind had fallen asleep on Sheldon's lap and one could hear her tiny sounds of snoring.
"Can you imagine the burden that this secret meant for my family, Amy? Can you imagine what it meant for Granny and Grandpa to lie to me and to everybody around every day? How could Katrina do this to them? How?"
"Mum, I don't know what to say" Amy had scooter closer to her mother and tried to comfort her by patting her shoulders. She wasn't used to have physical contact with her.
"I have sworn to myself to make things better than "my sister". I stayed a virgin until marriage, soon after I got pregnant, everything the way as it should be. I wanted everything to be good again for the people that I considered being my parents for so long, I wanted us to become a normal family, again.
And I didn't want to do any mistakes in raising my child, I wanted you to become a god-fearing and diligent person and I wanted you to find a man and have your own, proper family one day. And that you did, with a little help of mine, and I am proud of you and of everything you have achieved." Helplessly she patted Amy's hand and Amy took it and held it awkwardly in hers.
"But raising you was hard for me. I didn't want to ask for my family's help too much, I wanted to get that done all on my own, I wanted to proof that I am a far better mother than Katrina."
"I would have loved to help you…" Peter silently interfered.
"Oh Peter, what do men know about raising a child, what could you have helped me. That's a problem a woman has to solve on her own…"
Sheldon cleared his throat. "Well, I guess Amy and me have a different opinion on that."
"Not now, Sheldon" Amy shook her head in his direction, but smiled at him. She knew he only wanted to support her.
"I did what I could" Patricia continued now. "And I think the result is presentable. But I will try to be less frightened in the future." She smiled slightly and pressed Amy's hand.
"Mum…" Amy looked at her mother with tears in her eyes. "I don't know what to say… I'm so sorry for everything I've learned today. And I want you to know that …" She had never said that to her mother before "I want you to know that I love you!"
"Me, too. I love you, too my little wallflower" Having said that, Patricia awkwardly took Amy in her arms (to be honest, it reminded Sheldon a lot of their first cuddling session, many years ago on the couch in Amy's old apartment).
"Oh, I forgot there's something I wanted to give you," Peter suddenly said to Sheldon and gestured him to follow. They both got up (Sheldon careful to no wake up his sleeping baby) and went to the hallway. "Let's give those two some privacy, they really need to talk," he murmured and went to a basket that was standing next to the entrance door. "So, ehm, there's something that I wanted to give you, maybe you can use it as a toy for Rosy… I have cleaned it twice in the washing machine." He reached into the basket and out if it he drew an ugly green teddy bear, which was holding a heart with the labeling "I love you" in his hands.
Sheldon knew immediately where he had seen this teddy bear the first time and although he was sure he wouldn't want Rosy to play with it under any circumstances, he would keep it safe somewhere in a hermetically sealed box in his closet. After all, this bear had helped starting one of the greatest adventures in his life.
*When I first tried to imagine, how the living room of Amy's mother's house could look like, I immediately imagined it the way I described it here. For German standards this is a very, very average living room for the generation of Amy's mother. Probably a "typical" American living room for someone like Amy's mother would look very different, but I don't know how, so I decided to pretend, that this sort of living room was typical in America, too. My ulterior motive behind this is just, that I imagine everything to be very average, boring, kind of unpersonal, a little cold and very clean and tidy. ("Spießig" for the German readers, LOL!)
So, I don't know if this whole storyline about Patricia's mother isn't a little bit over the top? It was a spontaneous idea. What do you think?