March 25th 2023

Chapter 202
Memories Upon Memories

It was starting to feel like a pattern in her life, possibly for the fact that she had now been through this cycle four times in less six or seven years. She'd watched her life follow the waves of the changes and the developments that came with repeat motherhood both accidental and intentional. And it was all good and fine, especially now, as the changes were not nearly as jarring as they might have been, say, back when she'd had Elliott, and then Noah not too long after. By the time they'd gotten Jamie, and now the twins, it had become something else, it was a path already laid out before them.

The pattern she was getting to see now had to do with art, with music, both things that had always been so central to who she was. It wasn't as though they completely disappeared from her life the moment a stick told her she was pregnant again, but it did get to be that sooner or later they'd end up a bit set aside, not nearly as visible to her as they had once been. And then she'd have the baby... or babies... and there'd be those first few weeks and months going by where they could only be her entire world, because they'd need to be, and then...

And then, one morning, she would wake up with this urge in her, with inspiration, and it would be just the kind where her whole mind would not know any other alternative but to follow it wherever it led. From there, it would go on and flow for as long as it needed to go.

That turn happened once again now, after the twins, specifically in early March. Simon and Jack were coming up on four months old already... already... And while they retained many qualities they'd had from birth, primarily the ones that had earned them many a bear-themed toy, clothing, and accessories, they were definitely growing beyond their newborn stage and fully into babyhood. As of yet, their thing mostly seemed to be that they would always be of a single mind. If one was happy, the other was happy by an equal measure. If one was upset, the other would pitch a fit in complete harmony. And it never felt like the other one was only mirroring his twin, like he'd see an emotion and match it. To everyone who saw them, it would feel as though the boys were going through life at a lockstep, never deviating from one another. It was kind of fascinating, right up until they had two babies crying themselves red in the face in the middle of the night.

Maya had actually slept very well that night, all things considered. There had been no crying fits, in fact the boys had been a jolly pair as it came time to feed them, and change them... Maybe that was part of the whole equation, but either way what it had led to was something like a fever dream of imagination, and by the time she'd awakened in the morning, all she could feel was this prickling in her mind, a tingling in her fingers that called to action, to creation. Now it was only a matter of figuring out what to do and where to start.

She saw Lucas off with Elliott, Noah, and Ava, as he would take them to school and head to work, and then it was down to her, Jamie, Simon, and Jackson. Their mornings, once they got to that part, had come to find a routine of sorts, thanks to Jamie finding a show he loved and which happened to play at that time on the Food Network. He would grow anxious if he thought that they were missing it, which would really become an issue once he started preschool in the fall, but they'd figure out a way around it by then... hopefully. In the meantime, his show came on, and he alternated between sitting and standing in front of the television. He had his favorite toys, his kitchen things, well at hand, and he would pick them up at need, the better to imitate whatever the chef on the screen was making. The true test of quality would come as he'd go and feed a spoonful of nothing to his mother and she would react appropriately.

Maya would be there on the couch, behind him, holding one or both babies if they weren't just in their bassinet, and it would be one of her favorite times of the day. On THIS day, she sat on the couch minding her sons, yes, but also minding her ideas. Music had been left to fall into the background far more than the rest, it felt. She had not forgotten the high days of TXNY, nor could she ever, and part of her did occasionally still lament that it no longer existed, but she never thought about bringing it back. She would love to make music again, but she knew it wouldn't be the same. People were forgetting about them, people had forgotten. Maybe they could try for a comeback, but it just didn't feel like they should. They could be successful, or they could fall flat on their faces, and frankly she didn't want to find out which one it would be.

Anyway, it didn't seem like any of them would have been in a good place for it, with how careers and families were getting to be a thing for all of them. Maybe later on, when they were more settled and if they still wanted it, but until then she had to decide for herself. She had a husband and six children. She had worked very hard to end up where she'd wanted to be and become an art teacher. She co-ran a bakery with her aunt. Did she even have space left to fit music in? She remembered those days, remembered how much time and energy it would require, and maybe it was that she'd been so often in pregnancy and baby mode for the whole of her twenties thus far, but she didn't think that she had it in her to go back. Maybe she could start and doing open mic nights again. She'd done that a while, it was good... It was something...

Now the art part, the one with paints and pencils, that had never left her, naturally, though like music it had for sure fallen into the background by comparison to what it had once been. The closest she'd gotten to being the old way again was once she'd started teaching, so then when she'd gone on leave... She was going back again, in just a few weeks, and she was as anxious for it as she dreaded the idea of detaching herself from mornings like this, with her boys and the Food Network.

She and Lucas had not yet addressed in definite terms whether they would try for more children after the twins. They might joke about how they only had five boys of indeterminate height and not seven tall sons, but beyond that neither of them seemed ready or willing to say the other part, and they had to know why. The last several years had been a whirlwind of children, but now they were very close to the ground again. They might have had their last children, and that left them with a strange bit of nostalgia, looking to this world of theirs, wonderful and chaotic, and imagining themselves never being in it again. Their children would grow, would pass out of being babies, toddlers, children... and there'd be no more little ones around them, no more sweet ones grappling at them, pouncing at them, giggling and running around them, telling them nonsensical tales they could listen to all day... How had they gotten here already? And had they really? Were they done?

She tried not to think too hard about this, focusing instead on the immediate good as they lived it and as it approached. She missed her students, missed being in class with them. Her substitute, the Day boys' father, had been keeping her appraised of all that was going on in class while she was away, which she appreciated very much, but she knew it couldn't be the same as being in there herself. Now that she had a return date officially locked in, she was thinking about it more and more, thinking about what they would all do together for the last stretch of the year. She'd sort of had a vague plan going into the year, since she'd known that she'd be gone for a good chunk of it, but she'd always left herself the space to completely scrap that plan and start over, knowing that her head could be in a whole other place once the twins were born and she'd been home with them for that time.

She had this new inspiration in her now, and even as it made her want to start creating, it had her thinking of how it could extend into what she'd do with her students. She wanted to do something kind of... out there... a project that would hopefully fuel their own creativity as hers had been. And of all things, what did it was her Tadpole, crouched on the floor and playing made up recipes. He had some level of instincts of what went together or not, which was always amazing to see, but he was also a toddler, and sometimes he had ideas of mixing things that didn't so obviously go together. He would want to try it anyhow, and they would entertain him where they could, even when they reasonably knew the results would not be good, because sometimes it would actually work.

She saw this, and she soon had this thought bubbling in her head. Could she make it happen? It would require supplies, and she would likely have to pay for them herself. It wasn't that she couldn't make this happen, especially nowadays, but she did still need to be careful and find some way to keep this as cost effective as she could. If she did it the way she envisioned, it might not actually be so bad...

"Hey, Tadpole," she called to Jamie as his show had ended and he turned to her at once. "Want to go to the mall?"

She may not have still worked at the art store, but she was still very well known and well loved, especially when she was so kind as to bring in her tiny boys for her former co-workers to gush at. And once she told them what she had in mind, they knew just how to best make it work for her. They were all of one mind when it came to helping students get in touch with their artistic sides.

After a productive trip to the mall, ending with lunch in the food court, they returned home. Once the boys were all settled in for their naps, she got to work, opening various packages and creating as many bundles as she had students. She had colored pencils, lead pencils of various sizes, the same for pens and markers, colored or black... She also had paint, in different types, different colors, but always in such a way that she could separate out, along with basic brushes to go with them.

Letter sized envelopes were laid out on the kitchen table, each identified with the group it would go to and then the student's name. It all took a lot longer to accomplish than she had anticipated, as she wanted to give it proper thought, but it came together in the end. Everyone was given three things, each of a different medium, in colors that could be as complementary as they could be curious. The envelopes would be filled with those selections and sent off to Barton Day so that he might distribute them.

The students would find that each envelope also contained a note, telling them the date of her return along with the details of their assignment. They were to take the items they had been sent and use them to illustrate what they inspired in them. She would expect them to show it on the day she returned and, because she was always there to share her own passion, she would have her own piece to present, one to each group. She was also about fairness, so she would let them pick HER tools, her colors. She couldn't wait to see what they'd have for her.

x

Many times on visiting the ranch or simply interacting with Juliet, Lucas had heard his grandmother's friend and successor talk about how she wanted to put together an archive for Sullivan Stables. He wasn't sure how they would make it all work or even where they'd put it, but he could definitely agree that they had the materials for it. Now and then, he would be drawn to one place or another where boxes had been stored, each one filled with any kind of documents, mementos, objects from the property's decades-long history, and he could spend hours looking through it all if he let himself settle in. It was all so genuinely fascinating, and he was sure that there would be many people out there who would be just as taken by it all. It wouldn't matter whether they were local or not, although for sure the ones that were local would have a different experience from interacting with all this information.

It couldn't be helped, but he loved especially to find any and all things that related to his family, whether it was his mother and uncle or their mother and fathers… He'd find that his attention was particularly drawn to certain eras. The first of those, obviously, was anything that had to do with the founding of Sullivan Stables, with his grandparents, Simon and Marianne. It was well beyond his years on Earth, even beyond when his mother had come along, but that only made it that much more fascinating to him. He loved especially to find pictures of the property when they had first started out, to look at it and piece together where this thing or that one would later be built. He loved finding images of the construction, of the structures that came together, and seeing his young grandparents in the midst of it all.

He also loved to find anything from when his mother had been expected and then born, just a tiny babe no bigger than the baby boys who now bore her father and stepfather's names. Of course, any time he'd end up looking anywhere close to that period, he'd run the risk of tripping along right into when his first grandfather had been lost. Knowing how difficult of a time it had been for his grandmother to go through, and for his mother, too, to some degree, it kind of felt like walking across a barrier and finding himself in that moment there, with them. It was always difficult but, at the same time, he would feel that it was necessary. He couldn't avoid that time. It was a part of him, of his family's history.

Next to the founding of the ranch, his favorite thing to find were memories from his mother's time as a rider. Looking at the young Melinda Sullivan in photos found in boxes, or albums, or in newspaper clippings, Lucas would have so many thoughts running through his mind. It would be just as it was when he saw either of his parents, or even his grandparents be anywhere near his age, or even younger, always kind of startling in the best way. With his mother as a child, as a teenager and young adult, he would love how he could pick up on all the ways in which she had changed, evolved, even as he caught the ways in which she was still the exact same person. He looked at her there and he couldn't wait to see if any of his boys would join their big sister and want to learn to ride, too.

The unexpected thought that would come to him when he'd look at those pictures would be of what it might have been like if any of the children born to him and Maya thus far had been girls. It could feel like a slight on Ava to think it, but it really wasn't. They would never trade her in for the world. He still couldn't ignore this image he had in his head of a blond girl on a horse, with that same spirit in her, inherited from her Granny Mel. There wasn't much to be done for it except to see what time and life would do about that. Was there any chance left for that girl to exist? Maybe, maybe not. If she didn't, well… There was nothing to keep that spirit from residing in Melinda's grandsons either… or in her adopted granddaughter. He knew she would be proud of any of them, whatever they did. That was who Granny Mel was and would always be.

Looking through the various boxes, whether or not he came across anything to do with his favorite subjects, he still couldn't get over how rich of a history the ranch already had. Now he was getting to be a proper part of it at last. It might not be exactly the kind of part he'd first set out to hold, but it was just as important to him. And with those boxes, he would be reminded plainly and simply that he wanted to find more ways, new ways in which to get involved. He wanted to help make sure that their history would keep on evolving. He had the segments, and those were great, but he felt like he had much more in him to offer and maybe the answer was in these boxes.

When the day was through and he went to collect the kids from school, the subject came up again. The three of them had taken to asking him about his day on the ride home, and Lucas was always more than happy to give them what they wanted. He told them about being at the office, then being at the ranch, culminating in his trek through the boxes. They were stopping on the way to pick up a couple of things from the grocery store and this brought them to the large freezers, where Elliott and Noah stood together, debating which types of fries they were going to get. Staring at the two of them, debating very seriously which ones were the best, Lucas just had to smile. Simon and Jackson may have been their Hug-a-bears, but these two were the original 'twins' of the house. They weren't twins, no, but they had been so close when they'd been smaller that they might as well have been. And nowadays, being in different schools, they would usually stick very close together as soon as they were reunited.

"Find them?" Lucas asked when he saw Ava coming back from the other end of the aisle. She held up a box with a look like 'I think?' "Yeah, that's good, drop it in," he indicated the basket sitting next to the boys. She did so – the boys didn't notice, busy as they were – and came to stand with him to watch them.

"You know, I bet you could have your own show," Ava declared. Lucas looked down to her, smirking. "Instead of just little bits on the news," she insisted, nodding.

"Yeah?" he asked, and she nodded again. "Well, what kind of show would this be? What would it be about?"

"Same thing as what you're doing now, just more of it. And there could be other things," she went on, showing a rush of thought that was very reminiscent of her Mama, through no intervention of DNA. "Like… local history, ranch stuff, from those boxes."

"That… That could be something," he admitted after a beat.

"Yeah!" Ava replied, grown excited from his support of her idea. "I bet we could come up with so many other ideas!"

"Don't doubt it for a second," he smiled, putting his arm around her for a side hug, which she happily received. "But you have to get your homework done first," he squinted at her, to which she gave a look that he read as 'hello, of course I will.' He just knew that she'd be scribbling away about this as soon as she could, and he was truly eager to see what she'd come up with. The more he thought about it himself, he really liked it, too.

That'd only be half the battle, even a quarter of it. Sure, they wanted it, but what would the people at the station have to say about it? If they didn't want it, well… there were other ways to make this so, weren't there? This felt too right to him not to see it through as far as it would go. And he could think of so many people around him who would think the same way. They'd be right there to carry them as far as they needed to go.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners