Shelby has avoided bringing it up for a lot longer than she should have. It's just… when Teal'c is here, there is no problem. When she is removed from it by a couple of days, or even minutes, all the problems seem smaller. She thinks that next time she'll be able to conquer the problems with sheer force of will. She doesn't want her husband to know what a failure she is.
Now she's realized that she just can't be a good mother, no matter how much she tries. Today, it took her almost an hour to get both babies feed and changed enough to stop screaming. She's pretty sure that Tamara failed her science test, based on what she knew about it last night, and if she was grading Rya'c's persuasive essay, she'd give him a negative million for the score. Well, maybe part of that grade came from the argument the two of them had had when she was helping him finish it.
Anyway, she wasn't going to let the kids suffer anymore.
When he goes into kel-no-reem she follows him.
He raises and eyebrow at her.
"I can't do it."
"To what are you referring?" he asks.
A tear rolls down her face. She's brave, but not brave enough for this. "I can't be a good mother."
Teal'c steps forward, touching her face softly, "You are a good mother."
"No, you don't understand. It's too much. You don't see it, because it's easy when you are home. When you are gone, though, I'm just barely able to hold everything together, and sometimes, not even quite."
"The children are taken care of," he says with confidence.
"You're not getting it! It's not even safe. They don't get fed when they should. Or put to bed. They are barely bathed, and they're not always wearing clean clothing! Forget about getting all of their school work done. I'm lucky if I can keep them alive! They deserve better than this! It kills me that our kids aren't taken care of! I don't want them to live like this."
He studies her for a long moment, wishing he knew more about Earth culture. Wishing he knew what sort of response would be appropriate, what sort of response that his wife wants. "Do you wish us to give some of our children to others?"
"What? Give away our kids? Do Jaffa do that?" she asks in horror.
He shakes his head, "I thought it might be a tradition among the people of Earth. I cannot think of another solution to our problem."
"I need you here more," she says.
"Do you wish me to quit my job at the SGC? I do not know how we would take care of the material needs of our children if neither of us had a job," he says.
"No, I don't want you to quit. I was just wondering if…I don't know you can cut back on your hours a little bit. My maternity leave is going to be over in a few weeks, and I wouldn't even think of going back if you're working this much. Maybe I don't need to, but if you're traveling all the time I don't know how we are going to manage."
"You wish me to leave my place on SG-1?" Teal'c asks.
"Maybe? Just for a while? Otherwise, maybe they would be willing to allow you to take a few less trips through the gate."
"That would require me transferring to another team. SG-1 is a frontline team, and membership on it requires frequent trips through the gate."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't even be asking you to take a hit with your career. If you can think of anything else that we can do I'm willing to do it. I'm just at the breaking point. I mean, the kids have a four day weekend coming up, and you're going to be gone for the whole thing. I am going to have to take care of five kids for that whole time. Rya'c has his first research paper to write over the weekend. Based on how his paper last night went, it is going to be pulling teeth."
"Let me consider this matter," Teal'c says.
He doesn't miss the panic in his wife's eyes. He realizes how hard this must have been for her to come to him, and he knows that if he doesn't give her a bit of help now she's going to sink.
"You can spend the long weekend with Bra'tac and the rebel Jaffa."
"Are you serious? You want me to travel to another planet with five children? That sounds like a lot more work than helpfulness," Shelby explains in disbelief.
"Among the Jaffa, all women help in the childrearing responsibilities. There will be plenty of people there to help you."
"Ok. I mean, it's only for four days. If it makes things worse, I can always come back here. I kind of wish that you could join me."
"I have a mission," her husband replies stoically.
"I know," she says trying not to let too much sadness get into her voice.
"By the time that you return, I hope to have a more permanent solution devised."
"One that doesn't involve us getting rid of any of our children?" she asks.
"Indeed."
Three Days Later
"Tek-ma-te, Mater Bra'tac," Shelby says as she came through the gate. Those were the first words that she ever learned in the Jaffa language. Back when she first learned them, she did not even have the smallest understanding of what they truly meant. She knew that they were a greeting. She knew that they meant that you respected someone. But she didn't feel all of the things that she now felt when she said them.
Jaffa language was deeper than human language, there was no other way to explain it. You couldn't understand what it meant unless you have put in hours of meditating, and sparring. Tek-ma-te was a position of the body as much as it was a word. It was a thought and a feeling and a way of being much more than it was a greeting.
"Tek-ma-te, Shelby," he says smiling, and returning the bow. She can tell that he is impressed with how far she has advanced in her martial arts since he last saw her (even though she hasn't done anything since the babies were born). She knows this even though he doesn't say anything out loud. It isn't reading the mind, quite. Just a soul searching body language reading thing that the Jaffa have mastered. Something that she is learning from her husband, little by little.
"This is really another world?" Becky asks, running off to touch a tree, just because the tree is not a tree of Earth.
"Stay close," Tamara warns nervously.
Becky looks back and Shelby wondering for a second if she isn't being a bit too courageous. This is, after all, a whole different planet.
"Stay in sight," Shelby encourages as the child puts her hand on the three, and the family makes their way to the village.
"The children do not need such a warning," Bra'tac says.
"Surely your children have some sort of limit. What is beyond the village?" Shelby asks.
"No-one would let them go beyond the village," Bra'tac says calmly.
"That's what I'm doing, not letting them go beyond the village. Children need limits." Shelby says this with confidence, even though she's not completely sure why this is the case. She read it in a parenting book. She figures saying things like that from time to time will keep other people from catching on to the fact that she has no idea how to raise children. Teal'c made sure to make her motives for taking the children off world seem more like a vacation than a last ditch effort to maintain his wife's slipping sanity.
Some children are playing a game of jump-rope. Becky runs up, and asks if she can play in English. The children that she is talking to are young, young enough that they don't understand much of what she says. Rebel Jaffa do not teach their children the language of humans in the same way that the people of Earth do. They let her play anyway.
Tamara is at the age where it is a little harder to integrate into new situations. She sits down on the grass, and some girls about her age run up and start talking. They are a bit more fluent in English, but it is still a bit difficult for them.
Rya'c greets some of his old friends with the Jaffa hand/shake hug before they run off together to spar.
Shelby sighs in contentment, thinking that perhaps her husband was right, and this is going to be an easy weekend after all. Then both of the twins start to cry at the same time. The nearest women takes one of them out of her arms, and starts to comfort it. She would have done more if she'd been more familiar with Ta'uri diapering principles.
Community is a beautiful thing.
The Next Day
Bra'tec is surprised by the degree to which Ry'ac has gone native. He sits, pounding on the strange device they brought with them that they refer to as a "laptop".
"What are you doing?" Bra'tac asks, sitting next to the boy who seems to have regressed from man to boy in the short time that he was on Earth.
"I am writing a paper."
"There is no paper in that."
"That's just what they call it. You have to take a whole bunch of things that other people have said, and you have to write them all together with your own thoughts. It's for school."
"I thought that you hated this school that you went to," the older Jaffa says.
Rya'c shrugs his shoulders.
"Put away this device, and listen to me for a time," Bra'tac commands.
Rya'c closes it with a dramatic roll of his eyes which shows that he would really rather not.
"Why have you become so consumed in school?" Bra'tac has seen Ry'ac working on school a lot since he arrived. He's also seen Shelby helping the boy a lot more than she had time for. Even with the other women around to help, she's busy enough with the other children. Bra'tac can see all the things that Shelby wouldn't admit. He has even guessed his former student's real reason in sending his wife for a visit. Rya'c is old enough to be taking away from the problem instead of adding to it, and Bra'tac can see that it would be better if someone who wasn't related to him was the one to tell him that.
"I want to graduate on time. In order to do that, I'm have to take a whole bunch of extra classes."
"You mean that you are not required to work this hard?"
"I have to if I'm going to graduate on time."
"What if you were not going to?" the teacher asks softly.
Rya'c stares at him for a moment, not fully processing what is being said.
"Would you then have time to assist your mother in the care of the younger children and the keeping of the house?"
"She's not my mother, and that's women's work."
"The woman that your father has chosen to wife is your mother, or at least close enough. This is truer when it is a woman as noble as Shelby of the Ta'uri. As for it being the work of a women, a real man does whatever work is required of him. Would you think it was women's work if you had to feed a fire to keep warriors from freezing in the night?"
Rya'c shakes his head.
"I did not consider it women's work to teach and care for either your father or you. You should be glad of this."
"I am very grateful for everything that you have done for my family, Master Bra'tec."
"The proper way to show that gratitude would be to do more things for your family now. Your family has need of many things, young Rya'c."
Rya'c looks at Shelby, who is translating a nursery rhyme one of the old Jaffa is saying into English, much to the delight of her little sisters. She is rocking one of the twins, while the nursery rhyme reciter holds the other.
He tries to remember the last time that he saw Shelby without a child in her arms.
He had been a warrior once; not long ago, even. But now, now Shelby was teaching him, as if he was a child. Bra'tac was right; he was old enough to teach himself. He was old enough to teach his sisters. He would not shame his master again.
Two Days Later
"We've got a surprise for your dad," Sam says when she picks up her kids from school. She tosses them shirts and says, "Put these on over your clothes."
"I don't get it," Hannah says as she pulls one of the shirts out of the bag.
"It says we're big sisters," Emma says, not sure if her kindergarten sister is having difficulty reading the words or understanding the meaning behind them.
"Mine says big brother," Ty says quick to correct any accusation of the feminine. He's old enough that he's starting to get teased about that.
"Are you having a baby?" Emma asks, sounding… worried.
"Yeah, we are, and you are all going to be part of the announcement to Daddy," Sam says with a grin.
"Which of you is going to have the baby?" Hannah asks.
"Only in our family would that be a valid question," Sam says with a sigh, "The baby is growing inside of me, right now."
"How did it get there?" Hannah asks.
"Trust me, you so do not want to know," Ty says.
"What?" Sam asks, completely surprised that her son knows the answer to that question himself. He is after all only nine years old.
"School," Emma says with a shrug.
Sam has always believed that explaining things openly and honestly to your children is the best way to prevent them from making any bad decisions. She always thought she would be the type of mother who would explain sex to her children long before any of the other parents did.
Apparently, she'd been naïve to think that nine was still too young.
She wonders if her son – the one with a closet full of dolls, the one who wore a dress to his parent's wedding, the one who danced ballet and played hockey – she wonders if he might need a special sex talk.
Did people include homosexuality in a sex talk with nine-year-olds, or did that come later?
Maybe she can dump this one on Jack, and take the much easier one with Emma for herself.
"Hannah, the baby got into me, because your father and I love you and your brother and your sister so much that we decided we needed more people to love," Sam says hoping that is an appropriate sex talk for a five year old. Hannah nods her head, satisfied by the answer/compliment.
-0-
Jack just took one of the longest showers in his life, and he's still not sure that he got the sand out of everywhere. He may make fun of planets full of trees, but he really hates the sandy planets.
Sam called him to say that she and the kids were picking him up from the base. Jack had thought that this was an utterly ridiculous plan, because his car was already on base. She'd assured him that they would drive together the next morning.
When he gets topside, he sees them – his entire family in matching red t-shirts. It isn't until a few steps closer that he reads them.
First his wife's "Hi daddy", all on her stomach. Odd; Sam hates pet names. She never called him "Daddy", even in front of the kids when they were learning to talk. Maybe "your daddy", but never just "Daddy".
Then Ty's, "I'm a big brother." Well, duh.
And Emma's "I'm a big sister." Established.
He is totally expecting something like, "I'm a little sister" from his youngest daughter. Then he sees that she too is wearing an "I'm a big sister" shirt.
He runs the last couple of steps that separate him from his family, and pulls his wife in into a hug. It only lasts a couple of seconds before he pulls the rest of his family into it as well.
After a few hugs, kisses, and excited chat they all pile into the car together.
"You realize that one more kid is going to result in a minivan, right?" Sam asks her husband.
He groans. "Can we do station wagon? They are at least a little cooler."
"Nope, we're going to have a minivan full of kids, and you're going to love it, mister."
"At least we can counter the dorkiness of our minivan with the coolness of our motorcycle."
"I think you mean my motorcycle," Sam giggles.
Note: The obvious solution to Shelby and Teal'c's problem would be to hire a nanny to help take care of the children. However, I do not think that either spouse in this relationship would think of that solution. Teal'c is from a culture that I don't believe would rely on hired help for child care, the community would take care of that. In another way, Shelby is also from a culture where hiring child care would be a bit of a foreign concept. Poor people just don't have the resources to do that. (Some kids I've worked with don't have the vocabulary for worlds like "babysitter" or "nanny" whereas rich kids usually have like 10 words for it in their vocabulary). Of course, they have the money to hire someone, it's just not a concept that would easily pop into their heads.