. . .
The Anniversary Evolution
Year Five
All willpower was gone. The willpower to move. Sheldon was sitting on the floor, his legs bent up in front of him, his head leaning back against the front door. He had been sitting there for thirty minutes, ever since he had waved good-bye with extreme relief to the entire Wolowitz clan. He only turned his head when he heard Amy coming from Ada's room. She smiled softly at him as she approached.
"Amy," he said, when she was very close, "you know I think you're one of the preeminent minds of our generation, but even you have to admit that was a horrible idea."
Her smile spread, and she sat down on the floor next to him. "We were being kind. If we always just stay in and relax for Valentine's Day, why shouldn't we babysit someone else's children so they can go out? This way both Howard and Bernadette and Penny and Leonard got to have a date night."
"But it was a disaster! Jacob was so hyper, which only results in him being a bad influence on Ada. Lucy is teething or something, she cried all evening. I spent all night chasing Fenny around - I honestly don't remember a crawling baby getting into that much stuff. And it all went directly into his mouth! Plus I didn't get to spend anytime with you, being together! I was refereeing and you were soothing and it was nightmare!"
Amy snaked her arm around his and leaned her head against his shoulder. "I don't think I'd use the words disaster or nightmare. Everyone calmed down when we put in the movie. Dinner was a hit; it seems your favorite meal is the favorite meal of preschoolers everywhere. And weren't you the one who just asked me a couple of months ago if I wanted more children?"
"I meant a child, singular. Not children, plural. Certainly not three more." Leaning his own head down to rest on hers, Sheldon said, "I don't want you to be sad."
"Definitely not sad. I promise." Amy sighed softly. "Shall we just go to bed? I feel like you look."
"But we have to watch our movie! Disney's Beauty and the Beast is not our traditional Valentine's Day film," Sheldon protested.
"I know. But I think we have to be mature enough to realize that Valentine's Day will not always be the romantic, quiet evening that we would perhaps want it to be in a perfect world. Traditions will come and go with time."
Sheldon's stomach sank. He did not want to lose their Valentine's Day traditions. He had learned a lot in five years of marriage, including the art of compromise and the need to just let some things go no matter how much it pained him; but this was not something he wanted to do only half-way. He also wondered if Amy thought he had forgotten something, if she was really just putting on a passive face, if she was subtly hinting that she was forgiving him for letting another tradition go. The idea of her disappointment rallied him, bringing the willpower back.
"Please, Amy?" he whispered. "We'll cuddle, and if you get too sleepy, I promise we can stop it."
Amy's head shifted, which caused him to raise his own head. She was looking at him, her eyes soft and full of love. "Okay. Shall I make tea while you get the Blu-ray out? Or is it on Netflix now? That would be easiest."
"No!" he shouted. Amy's eyebrows went up. "You get the Blu-ray out. Definitely the Blu-ray! Not Netflix! And you definitely need to be the one to get it, not me! I'll make the tea."
He could see that Amy was intrigued by his insistence, but she got up calmly and didn't argue. Getting up himself, he went to the kitchen to make tea, watching her the entire time. He loved to watch Amy move, the precise and sure way she performed her actions. She found the Blu-ray on the bookshelf, walked over to the player, and opened the case.
A huge grin spread across her face as she pulled the Post-It notes out, one by one.
"I love you more than Sir John loved Irene."
"I love you more than Mr. Mansfield loved Jane."
"I love you more than Ahmed loved Baghdad."
"I love you more than Hans loved Leia."
"I love you more than Henry loved Clare."
"I love you more than Christopher loved Toby."
She almost ran toward him in the kitchen, throwing her arms around him. He squeezed her tight in return.
"You didn't forget," she mumbled into his chest.
"Please, Amy, I never forget anything," he said over the top of her head. "Especially something this important."
Later, the last words of About Time ringing in their ears, they found they were not too tired, after all, to brush each others skin, not only with a slowness that had been learned in five years time, but also with tenderness and desire that had never lessened in five years.
"I love you more than science and my spot," he whispered.
"I want to swim in your blue eyes," she whispered back.
"It's snowing," Sheldon grumbled, watching the flakes fall in the fog. After all of the effort he had put into this fifth anniversary present for Amy, Mother Nature was going to ruin it for them.
The Smithsonian had a special Laura Ingalls Wilder exhibit, as it had been 150 years since she had moved with her family from Minnesota to the prairie of Kansas. He would have preferred to travel to Washington, D.C. in the summer, both for Amy's birthday and to avoid the possibility of any snow, but the exhibit would be gone by then. The National Museum of American History had been their first stop, and they had spent all of the day prior there. Amy had prattled off her knowledge and had glowed and grinned with excitement, and it had been wonderful. But now it was snowing.
"I just looked up the forecast. Two to three inches total, stopping about midday," Amy said from the table where she was finishing her room service breakfast. Then she said softly, as though she had read his mind, "It won't ruin our plans."
Sheldon turned from the view of his nation's capital spread before him to look at Amy. "But look how big the snowflakes are!" he pouted.
Amy smiled and got up to stand next to him at the window. "I think it's beautiful. I miss real winters with real snow. It was one of the best things about living in Cambridge. After a snow, the entire campus was so hushed and peaceful. Nothing is more beautiful than fresh snow on the trees. It's magical."
He rolled his eyes. There she goes again, with all her sentimentality.
"You love it when I'm sentimental," Amy said.
There she goes again, reading my mind! He didn't know which was more alarming: the mind reading or that she was correct. Before he could respond, Amy's phone chimed.
They moved swiftly to the table, and Sheldon could hardly believe how eager he was for the screen to fill with the scene of his mother's kitchen and Ada's face. Another concern he'd had about this trip is that Amy would not want a layover in Houston to pass their beautiful daughter off to his mother, even if it was just for a few days. She had tried to hide her tears when they boarded their second flight there without Ada, but Sheldon had seen them; he found his own throat incredibly tight, and he only succeeded in holding Amy's hand instead of thinking of anything reassuring to say.
"Good morning, sweetheart!" Amy beat him to a greeting. Well, it's probably for the best. I'm not the sentimental one. "Did you sleep well?"
It had taken Sheldon far longer than it should have taken a man of his IQ to understand this daily question of Amy's. This question was her way of reassuring herself that she had not passed down her night terrors.
"Yes," Ada replied. She was so adorable there, in her pajamas, her hair still rumpled, sitting on Mary's lap at the kitchen table. Of course. She's mine.
"Are you behaving for MeeMaw?" Sheldon asked at the exact same time Amy said, "Are you having fun?"
Amy shot him a dirty look and he gave her one back. It was a valid question. No response came so Amy asked her again if she was having fun, and Ada just nodded her head.
"We're having a very fun time, aren't we, Ada?" Mary said. "Tell Mama and Daddy where we went yesterday."
"Museum," Ada answered.
"That's right. We decided that if Mama and Daddy were going to museums, we would, too!" She lifted her face up to look at Sheldon and Amy. "We spent the day at the Children's Museum of Houston. I was worried she'd be too young, but she seemed to enjoy it."
"Of course she enjoyed it, she's a genius," Sheldon said, and then frowned when no one replied.
"What was your favorite part?" Amy asked.
Ada shrugged. "It was too loud."
Mary explained, "We started out in the TotSpot, which was for her age, and she seemed to enjoy that just fine. Then I thought Sheldon would like it if i took her the sciency lab part, all this stuff about atoms and whatnot, but it was crowded. It may have been too much."
Sheldon raised his eyebrows. While he appreciated his mother's motives, he could not imagine that it was too much for his little homo novus. It was clearly just over-simplified. "Ada, when we get home, Daddy will take you to see Uncle Leonard's lab and explain how it all works. Would you like that?"
The smile and nod that met his question warmed his heart.
"Ada, it's snowing here! Remember what snow is from some of the stories we read? Do you want to see it?" Amy asked.
Ada leaned forward toward Mary's iPad, her face filling the entire screen, her blue eyes so bright. "Yes! Snow!"
Amy picked up the phone and carried it to the window, and Sheldon turned to watch her. "Do you see it? How it's covering everything and making it beautiful?"
"Will you bring me some home?" he heard Ada's voice.
"No," Sheldon yelled out. "Snow is made of crystalline ice particles, so it will melt at approximately 32 degrees Fahrenheit. I refuse to be anywhere that cold." By the time he finished speaking, Amy had brought the phone back to the table.
"Too cold for Daddy, to hot for snow," Ada said.
Sheldon smiled. "Yes, exactly!"
"Thank you so much, Mary. I'm sure she's having a wonderful time," Amy said.
"No, thank you. I love having her for a few days. I love my grandsons, too, but, boy! are they rowdy! It's a real treat to have someone so quiet and calm and well-behaved for once. We haven't even had one of those T-A-N-T-R-U-M-S you warned me about."
"I was calm and well-behaved!" Sheldon protested.
"Shelly, you're too smart to believe that," Mary said.
Amy giggled next to him, and Sheldon nudged her.
"Okay, Ada, let's tell Daddy and Mama what we practiced and then we'll make chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast," Mary bent back down to look at the girl in her arms. "Ready? One, two, three -"
"Happy anniversary!" Ada and Mary said together.
Sheldon smiled at them. "Thank you. We love you."
"We miss you! Mama and Daddy will see you in two days!" Amy added.
"Two and half days," Ada said, holding up two fingers and struggling to bend a third in half. Sheldon beamed with pride at her insistence on precision.
"Yes, two and half, that's right!" Amy said, her eyebrows up. "Have fun!"
"Be good," Sheldon said.
There were good-byes all around and the screen went blank. Amy sighed. "I miss her."
"I do, too," Sheldon said, his voice timid. He still wasn't sure if he'd made the right decision; Amy loved to travel, but Amy also hated to leave Ada. Had she really been pinning away and putting on an act for him since they landed?
"But it's good for all of us. It's good for Ada to see how much we value each other, how important it is to us to spend time with each other, strengthening our marriage," she said firmly. Then her voice softened. "I'm having a wonderful time, Sheldon. It's just what I needed."
How does she do that? Sheldon smiled at her, pleased that her enjoyment was genuine. The light from the window caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to look. "Oh, no, is it worse?"
He got up to brood in front of the window once more, and Amy joined him. "It will be fine," she said. "We're taking the subway and the Air and Space Museum is all indoors."
Sheldon crossed his arms and sighed. "But it will be so cold. Too cold for me, as our little genius pointed out."
Amy put her arm around his waist. "You once went to the Arctic circle to perform experiments. I'm sure you can handle a couple of inches of snow."
"That's why I know precisely how cold it will be! We were so frightened of frost bite we had to sleep naked!"
"Well, then, how about this?" she rotated and wrapped her arms all the way around him, looking up at him. "If you go for a walk with me in the snow, we can come back here and sleep naked for warmth. And by sleep, I don't mean sleep. Then, later, you can decide if you still want to go to Air and Space."
Sheldon looked down at her green eyes and remembered how she had been mesmerized by the snow earlier, how eager she was to show it to Ada. Even before he said it, he regretted it. "A very short walk?"
Amy grinned with abandonment.
Against his better judgement, he dressed as warmly as he good (three tee shirts!), and they put on the coats they had bought just for the trip. And, although he wished his gloves were thicker, it wasn't even half-way down the block until he found himself feeling happier by the second. Darn Amy and her infectious joy! She was practically skipping down the almost empty sidewalk in front of him, actually twirling occasionally and talking and laughing and letting the snow flakes fall on her bright red cheeks and dark hair in the most alluring way. They leaned together for warmth on the way back, their breath visible and mingling in front of them.
Barely brushing her skin, he asked if his hands were too cold. Amy smiled in their igloo of blankets and told him no, she liked the sensation. Especially when he touched where she was the hottest. Finding just such a location, Sheldon had to admit she was right about the snow after all.
AN: Thank you in advance for your reviews!