Chapter 4: Hazel Enters the World

The morning was still dark, hazy and unclear due to the heavy black clouds above covering the sun that was desperate to peek through. Eli had started school two weeks ago but the pre-school in La Push didn't start until September, which gave me two more weeks to covet and cuddle my Hazel before the terrifying day of separation arrived.

"I want to wear blue," Hazel's ringing voice called out to me from the bed where she sat in a yoga-like pose watching me as I tried to get her ready. I had already presented her with upwards to fifty outfits from her "fall line" but none of them had yet to tickle her fancy.

"How about this?" I asked presenting a blue and white striped dress with a thick red belt from her "summer collection" which might have been a bit light for the fall though I brought it out with it a thick red knit cardigan I knew she loved and a pair of fuzzy lined red rain boots.

"Perfect Daddy! Oh, Daddy, you listen!" She howled laying the outfit out on the bed and examining it with an artistic eye. We had talked at length about her likes and dislikes just the day before. I know that all parents must think their children are gifted, but at four-years old, if Hazel, who had an unmatched vocabulary, wasn't a genius, I didn't know who or what was. She ran with the dress towards her paper divider changing like a dainty little lady all by herself as Tara had taught her to.

Hazel had the distinct advantage, or at least we hoped it was an advantage, of having a large variety of women around her. Helen taught her how to read and Soli had introduced her to Indie music I wasn't even sure I understood, though Hazel danced to it like a fool. Tara took that dancing love and instructed her not only in ballet but in the grace of being a lady. Claire nurtured her natural eye for art and color, Kim taught her how to swear though I wasn't sure she did it on purpose, Emily taught her about being polite and Harley threw those lessons out the window.

When Hazel reemerged, her dress all flared and adorable, she let me help her slip on her socks and boots and her thick sweater though I knew it was for my benefit and not her own. She was growing up and I was latching on, desperate to keep my little girl little for as long as I could.

"Are you ready for your day?" I asked her, watching as she packed her tiny black and white polka dot bookbag with the supplies listed on the school's website. Preschool asked for a lot more than I remembered from my childhood though the education reform of the late 2030's did set the standards higher than they have ever been.

"Yes, Maria is going to sit next to me. She's my friend." Maria was one of the many children Hazel had become buddies with after her end of the summer month long play date bonanza, though she was one of the very few Hazel seemed to click with. It wasn't that Hazel was a cry baby, she could be extremely tough, and it wasn't that she was unpleasant, she was sweet as pie, but at times with unfamiliar people she clammed up, staying entirely quiet no matter how hard the others around her tried to pull her out of her shell.

"Oh, that's going to be fun," I cooed pulling out her little panda umbrella which she opened indoors for the umpteenth time this week, no matter how many times I asked her not to. She swirled it above her head, dancing with her sweater already in place and her book bag attached at her back. I couldn't prolong it any longer, I pulled on a shirt, slipped on some shoes and we were off, my sweet angel safely in place in her car seat.

"Daddy?" She sang out, kicking her little legs and watching me through the rearview mirror.

"Yes Peach," I answered giving her a wink in the mirror to make sure she knew I was listening.

"What time will you come get me?" She asked timidly and my heart, as if it was being pumped with air, doubled in size. She was just as scared as I was. I had become a stay-at-home Dad the year before she came to stay with us, meaning there had been very few days that Hazel and I did not spend together. She was putting on a brave face but she was scared too.

"Class ends at 1:15, Sweetie, and I will be there as soon as the teacher opens the door, I promise," I said firmly. She frowned turning to look out the window as we made our way into the school's parking lot.

"But Daddy, I wanted to go to Maria's house after school… can I?" She asked impatiently as if she had already asked me a hundred times and I had refused her at every turn. It's hard to admit it, but it hurt. She was my baby girl and she was leaving me for a whole day, a Monday, the day we usually fed ducks at the pond in the park and made dinner for the boys.

"Well, I have to call Maria's mother first but if you want to, yeah." I tried not to sound too unhappy about this new revelation but the excitement in her face made it harder.

It was raining heavily so I ran around to the back of the van, pulling out her umbrella which honestly covered very little of me and bracing her to my chest, covering her as best I could until we were in the safe confines of the bustling, warm school corridors.

"Daddy?" She asked again as I checked the school map, looking for her classroom.

"Yes, Peach."

"Can you let me down now?" Her head was tilted, her beautiful red curls cascading like a waterfall down her face, searching my eyes for an answer to my bizarre behavior. I put her down, kissing her little cheek before I placed her on the ground.

I shouldn't have wasted the time checking the map because no other room on the first floor was as bombarded with parents and tiny children as Room C on the south end of the hall. Maria and her mother stood near the end of the line of parents trying to get their children situated for their first day of class. Some children were crying, some laughing and one, a small caramel skinned girl with a long plait down her back screamed in obvious frustration, but Maria, as seemingly well adjusted as my Peach, called out.

"Hazel!"

Maria's mother Lisette was Puerto Rican, young, no older than 24 but nevertheless she was always impeccably dressed, polite, well-spoken and utterly enthralled with her daughter. Her boyfriend Ryan was a Quileute that held some vague family relation to Krys and Anna, though the exact degree could not be ascertained on either occasion I asked. He was an electrician and though we rarely saw him, he gave the impression of complete devotion to his daughter and girlfriend whenever he was around and that was enough to put them both on the short list of people I would trust with Hazel's care.

"Oh, Jordan, come here," Lisette cried on the verge of tears. She pulled me into a warm friendly hug kissing both of my cheeks, a custom I had yet to become used to too. She smelled like coffee and sweet creamwhich matched surprisingly well with her long brown duster and creamy beige top which she wore over a pair of super tight jeans, her way I guessed of still feeling young though she had a child in school and one more on the way.

Maria, dressed like a miniature version of her mother, wore a brown turtleneck and little girl jeans, something we would never get Hazel into because of her aversion to pants and earth tones.

I kneeled down offering my hand to the little girl which she took with a bell-like giggle.

"Hello, Maria. You look wonderful, whose you're designer?" I asked, this was a game Hazel and I often played. Whenever I allow Hazel to get dressed completely on her own, she would walk the runway (i.e our kitchen hallway) and twirl twice before she came to talk to the reporters. Sometimes it was just me, asking her about what and who she was wearing. Other times it was the whole family.

Since she came into our life, Hazel has been a tornado of fashion and decoration. Each room in our house needed to be adjusted to fit her style, all clothes had to be approved by Hazel before they were worn and even Eli's choice of clothing and hairstyles were subject to her scrutiny.

Maria, who seemed confused by my question, smiled anyways, pointing up at her mother who beamed at her with such pride it made my heart hurt. I had never really had a mother, she had been taken away from me before I could really understand the magnitude of what I would be missing. Now Hazel, still too young to really understand it, was also motherless.

We wondered, Mark and I, if she really knew how different we were as a family. Eli was older when he came into our care, he was essentially alone, so to him we were like salvation, but Hazel had never been consciously orphaned. She went from her birth mother to two adopted mothers to her grandmother to us. Was there something about a mother, something special about the love of a mother that we could not provide? Did she know even now that her friend María had something we could never really provide?

When it came our time to escort the girls to class, we found a small round table where a pink cheeked boy fresh from crying sat alone. Unlike Lisette who worked three days a week, I had never sent Hazel to daycare. So Maria was an old hand at this separation thing, she kissed her mother on both cheeks and took off her coat carefully hanging it on the colorful hooks in the corner.

"Come on, big boy, you'll be fine. Wanna eat ice cream and watch daytime TV?" Lisette asked bumping into me playfully as I watched Hazel remove her thick sweater with help from Maria, placing it on the blue hook next to hers.

"You don't think we should wait around for a little bit, make sure they are okay?" I asked Lisette as she pulled me towards the door. Hazel blew me a kiss which I caught dramatically just as I reached the door, placing it lovingly on my cheek.

"Nope, we've got to let them experience this on their own, trust me if you come running back the first day or she starts crying and you're still here, she will do it everyday," Lisette said wisely and with her arm linked in mine I turned the corner, waving one last time to my little girl, now all grown up.

"Come on, daddy bear, I took the day off, lets celebrate, alright?"

"What are we celebrating?" I asked her incredulously. She smiled in a very understanding if not condescending way before she spoke again.

"Our daughters entering the world," she smiled motioning of me to follow her in my minivan which I did without hesitation though I was starting to doubt her sanity. How did she not see how terrifying this was? Our girls, our tiny little girls subject to young inexperienced teachers barely old enough to have children of their own, in contact with children of questionable parentage, with Lord knows what kind of manners and germs… I was a mess.

Lisette made us hot cocoa with almond extract and she told me about her family and her life, much more than I had gathered from our short times together. She was younger than I had guessed at only twenty; she had given birth to Maria at just 16 and her boyfriend soon-to-be husband was equally young.

Her house was small but clean and very well kempt. There were only two small rooms, Maria's instantaneous identifiable by the brightness that seemed to glow from it. Ryan had chosen to move them back here for the extra government help they could receive here as a registered member of the tribe. It made me worry for them, how could they afford, much less fit, another child in this tiny place?

I hadn't actually come in contact with many La Push residents outside of the pack for years. I saw them at stores and events when I happened to be in town, but I had lost touch with my roots and the problems facing the community a long time ago. Living and being a member of the pack was so very overwhelming, and when compared to some of the rest of the town, it seemed… almost perfect. We had our fair share of conflicts and drama, which was to be expected within a circle that was so intricately interwoven, but none of us dealt with the poverty or drug addiction rampant in town. Helen and Collin's continued recreational pot use was a source of comic relief more than a worry.

We never had to think about poverty, true some had less than others but never true poverty. We had never experienced cases of teen pregnancy, though that was a miracle in and of itself considering the way people seemed to mate like bunnies around here. We never saw or even thought about domestic violence, and though we could not boast the highest education levels, none among us were entirely uneducated. We were lucky and we didn't even know it.

"How did you meet Mark?" She asked timidly I could tell that while she was open and accepting of the idea of a gay couple raising a family, she had never experienced it before so was unsure on how to broach the subject. On average I tended to be more reserved, but seeing as she had just shared with me a pretty detailed summary of her life, I let her off the hook and broke the ice.

"Mark is the son of my old boss, Sam. I met him when I had just sorta finished my first book and I was thinking about starting my second."

"You're a writer?' She squealed, almost choking on her hot cocoa.

"Yes, I have written three books, my first one was written in Seattle, I'd left La Push, and when I came back I met him." I smiled feeling awkward talking about my achievements with a girl I knew worked so hard for the little she had.

"Was that when he was Chief? Ryan told me he was like the youngest chief ever."

Her big eyes were held open even wider than usual as she awaited my answer and I nodded making them all the much bigger. "I met him just before he became chief but yeah… he's amazing."

"He is and so handsome," she beamed playfully smacking my arm.

"Yeah, isn't he?" I never really got to brag about Mark with anyone before. Most outsiders I dealt with were in the literary world, and it wasn't really appropriate to brag about your gorgeous brilliant husband with your publisher, but I liked the feeling. I liked telling her about our struggles or how he was my student for a while, or that he made my knees weak before I was even sure I liked him. I finally got to voice my fears about Hazel missing out on a mother and was touched when she brushed away my concerns without even a second thought.

"She's so lucky to have you two though. It's better two fathers and a brother who love her, honestly," Lisette swore. I loved talking to her, I liked the freedom, the outside perspective and the honesty. Lisette, now six months pregnant, had no problem finishing a tub of ice cream and I was so relaxed that I didn't even realize we were minutes late to pick up the girls, the day just went by that fast.

"Daddy!" Hazel cried as I turned the corner into the room still teaming with kids and their parents eager to have them safe at home again.

"Ooh, Peach, I missed you," I told her, kissing both sides of her pudgy cheeks. Some of the surrounding parents, those who had not accepted the invitation to Hazel's summer party watched us closely. With Hazel being so pale, so obviously not native, I got used to those kind of stares, made worse when Mark and I took her out together, though Hazel seemed confused.

"Why are they looking at us?" She whispered in my ear as I pulled on her thick sweater and boots she had taken off during class.

"Because you're just that beautiful, Peach."

"Hehe, Daddy, you're silly," she cried leaning into me as I pulled on her left boot.

"I know… did you miss me?" I asked batting my eyes at her dramatically, she laughed louder throwing herself in my arms.

"Umhmm, I missed you a lot."