June 10th 2023

Chapter 213
The Difference of Years

She would not have believed that this year would already feel this real by now. It had only been a few days, not even a whole week, so even as Maya and the rest of the family had been looking forward to Friday, she'd had it in mind that there would still be this idea that another week or so would need to go by before she'd feel that she had a handle on what this year would be like with her and her four groups. But it was Thursday evening now and… she knew. A lot of it came down to her experiences with the groups as a whole and her experiences with some of those kids on their own.

The Mindscapes, for example, her first group of eighth graders, the ones who always felt to her most in tune with the fact that they were one school year away from diving into their high school years and felt any number of emotions about it… Even if it might have felt too early to some to assign views when she had not been a teacher for all that long, there was really no other way to put it. She saw it a lot in Taylor Munroe, and because they knew each other beyond the walls of the school, she'd had conversations with him that told her as much. She definitely saw it in a kid like Danny Arden. He was one of those who couldn't help but feel more grown up than some of his classmates, and as far as he was concerned, he'd be stuck on his own until he found some people who were more on his level. That was apparently going to happen once he reached high school. Maya decided not to burst his bubble.

Then when it came to kids like her Polychromatics, at the end of the day… She remembered how restless she could be in her last class, no matter what her schedule would have it be, year after year, and for that energy to be dedicated to art, the way these kids had it with her… She wasn't going to play favorites with any of her groups, they all had something special, but those starter and ender groups, they were just creating so many unique things… How could they not stand out?

This year's Polychromatics felt as though they were bursting with this need for life, and it was hard not to see all this as some extension of having Lambert Day as part of their group. It had been no one's intention for his story to come out, his injury and what it had led to, what it might have stopped, but it was just the kind of information that felt like wildfire. The moment it touched down, it spread, and grew, and would not be stalled. It could get to be a lot, and Lambert would be uncomfortable about it a lot of the time. Most anywhere else, he would have Taylor by his side to make it easier, but other places, like art, he was without his best friend. That was alright though, because he had someone else to tell people to back off of him when they got to be too much. He had Lea Sullivan-Reyes, and though their connection as classmates was new, they knew each other thanks to the bakery, and she was getting to be seen more and more alongside both Lambert and Taylor.

The afternoons were one thing, sure. All but one of those kids had been with her the year before, in different combinations. Her morning groups, now, being seventh graders, newbies, they might not have given her that same settled feeling, like the eighth graders, but they did, in their own ways. She had her Class Creatives, coming to her after one class, whatever it might have been, which sort of left them in a strange spot, with the dreaminess worn off of them, just not enough that the day felt fully underway, with how they then ended up with her.

That was the mood in that room every day. It was just a bit off center, but every time it was a brand-new day, and the potential for greatness was right there. She felt it a lot, seeing the developments, the… advancements by millimeters… in the connection between the grumbling Cade Foster and the shining Joy Augustin. Days had allowed Maya to find out a bit more about her new students, whether or not they were involved in the discoveries, and when it came to the boy… She did not trust to the gossips of the school, but this time around, it didn't take much for her to figure out they weren't completely off the track. Cade's mother was in prison, and she was not likely to get out.

It explained a lot of things about how he was, and how some of the kids were with him, too. If they knew him, if they about her… But hope still existed in that room and beyond, and that hope was Joy. She was just the kind of person who would give any mind to anything to decide how she felt about someone other than the person in question. And gruff as he could be, maybe because he felt that he had to, she seemed to think a lot of Cade, while he, like the others, didn't have it in him to be rude to someone like her. Something in him wanted to be kind to her.

She could see another important friendship blooming up with her Morning Makers, at the top of each of those few short days, but this one definitely moved faster. And because one half of it was her stepsister, she got to hear about it a lot more often than she might have otherwise. Stevie had called her after day one, telling her how she and Ashleigh Tomlinson had almost all their classes together, and she was really liking that she was getting to know her. According to Stevie, they were both kind of secret nerds, even if Maya wasn't so sure about the 'secret' part.

Stevie was very into Star Wars, something Maya was highly aware of. She and Ava and the boys had bonded at record speeds once that had come on the table. And Ashleigh, as her earrings on each day so far made it clear, loved dinosaurs. She knew so much about them, loved movies about them, too, whether or not they were accurate… They did not share one another's interest, but from the moment they'd started to spend time together, they had been talking a lot, describing, exchanging. There were already plans made for them to get together over the weekend for some movie marathon. In the meantime, they were just one example of the spirit that existed with the MoMAs, and it had made their art teacher look forward to starting off her days all week long.

She only wished that this could have always been the case with her daughter. Her year had been going well enough on the first day, right up until Ronnie the bully had set his sights on Kelsey and Ava had stepped in to defend her. Maya was still feeling the frustration in her gut, two days later, from the meeting they'd had, Lucas and her and Kelsey's parents along with the boy's parents. She'd known what kind of people she was about to meet, they all did, but it didn't make it much easier once they were actually in the same room. She'd say that the miracle of that day had been that she'd managed not to completely lose her cool. All she or any of them on the girls' side had wanted to do had been to make sure they wouldn't make things worse for them, and they had succeeded. It had been agreed – much to the ire of Ronnie's parents – that neither Ava nor Kelsey were at fault. There had been a warning issued to Ronnie regarding future incidents, and that had been the end of it.

Maya and Lucas and the Farrells had gone out to dinner after this, all of them needing to vent for their daughters' sake. It had felt really good. When this was all said and done, all that remained was a sort of unspoken acknowledgement of what they knew, which was that, not even factoring in the deep friendship between Elliott and their son, Max, they could all well be looking at a different kind of connection between their families, through their daughters and the likelihood of their someday becoming more than friends. The fact that Maya and Lucas recognized this awareness in both Brian and Haruna as well gave them hope – if they could call it that – that their Sweetpea was not headed the way of a broken heart.

Now here they were, a few days later, and while Ronnie had received some punishment, it felt like little more than a warning without consequence. To hear it from Ava, the only real warning he'd received was about being more covert in his actions. She was certain that it wasn't over, and her parents thought the same. Every afternoon when they had collected her, there had been this momentary dread in them, needing to know that she'd had a good day, that everything was fine. Though they could have done without all of it, they knew that it touched her heart whenever she saw how much they cared for her, and she got to see plenty of it here.

They generally did their best to keep the whole thing away from the boys. They could joke about how Elliott and Noah would hear that someone was messing with their sister and go into full protective brother mode, which would be funny because they were only six and five respectively, but that was really not the behavior they wanted to encourage in their sons. If they were told anything at all about this Ronnie thing, they would have to be given much more than the narrative. Instead, that day, they were collected from school along with Ava, all of them with the eager knowledge that it would be their little brother's birthday in the morning, and that meant that they'd get to surprise him. There were so many ways for them to do that, and they all had their ideas, which they shared throughout the ride that would take them over to the preschool, and to the birthday boy himself.

For someone who had not too long ago still been a very vocal opposition to the idea of his going to school, Jamie Nathaniel Friar absolutely loved going to Miss Alma's class. On each of the last three mornings, his second, third, and fourth days attending preschool, he had been the first one up, running out to his parents' room, to remind them that it was time to get up and that he could not be late. He would run back to his room after this, where he would go and pull at this clothes, getting his PJs off and his school outfit on. He was actually very good at dressing himself, they discovered, when he wanted to get somewhere badly enough.

He would do well at not spilling on himself when having breakfast – though accidents always happened – and then once this was done, he could be found standing in the living room, swaying from one foot to the other, watching the Food Network on the television as he waited for everyone else to be ready to go. This had been offered to him as an option on the previous day, as it was either that or have him constantly asking why everyone wasn't ready to go yet, like he was. It didn't compute for him that there was such a thing as being too early to leave.

Once he was brought to the school and left there for the day, from what they'd been hearing, he was supremely well behaved and always very helpful to everyone. Miss Alma was now on her third Friar boy over the past few years, and while she had fond memories of Elliott and Noah before him, too, they could see Jamie being the one she'd be the saddest to see depart once he was set for kindergarten in a couple of years.

As much as he loved being there, Jamie would speed toward his family when they'd come to pick him up at the end of the day, and oh, would he ever have stories to tell them about what he'd done while they'd been away. This got them through the car ride home, being brought back together with his baby brothers, and then dinner, his stories co-mingling with those of his brothers and sister, of his parents… Between that excitement and the fact that he was only hours away from being three years old, he was sweetly oblivious to what could only be described as shenanigans, happening around him. Sure, his birthday was happening on a Friday this year, which made some things easier in that they didn't have to worry about the morning after, but it had already been expressed among the siblings that they wanted Friday morning, before everyone went to work or school to be special.

So, that night, while they were home and going through the usual evening routine, Maya and Lucas saw to the distraction of their Tadpole while Secret Agents Sweetpea, Sprout, and Bee, did their thing. Jamie never noticed a thing, while his parents were endlessly amused at what their older three were getting up to as a team. Whatever they wanted to get done, they did it all before bedtime came calling. The three brothers retreated to their room in a galaxy far, far away, and Ava eventually went down to her room below, to read until she got her 'last call' to turn off the lights. Maya and Lucas checked on all four of them, and on the twins in their cribs, on the cats, and the dogs, and then it was time for them to turn in, too, already thinking of how three whole years could have gone by since they had their Jamie…

They got maybe two and a half hours of sleep before the sound of one and then both of their baby boys woke them. They'd tried the whole 'you get up this time, I'll get up the next time' tactic, but there really wasn't any point, not if they expected to get everyone back to sleep as soon as possible, so they got up, trailing up either side of the bed and then looking into the crib nearest to them. They picked up the screeching pair and looked at each other; they already knew where this was going, much as they'd hope it wouldn't. There was just nothing to be done for it once the cries went on long enough to both wake the other kids and let them come to the conclusion that their baby brothers would do loads better if they were all there to help them get back to sleep.

And soon there they all were, first a trio of disheveled blond heads peeking in from the room up the hall. Once they saw for themselves that their parents were up and holding the babies, they closed in all around by climbing on to the bed and standing on the mattress, the better to get at eye level with the pair. They were nearly ten months old already, hardly as small as they used to be, which only compelled their brothers to try and – literally – get on their level. Then there was their big sister, as she'd eventually make her way up one and then two flights of stairs, curls secured for the night, to see what she might do to assist. There'd be no telling any of them to go back to their rooms once they had a full set, so all they could really do was attempt to make the most of their presence and get the twins back down as soon as possible. That night, this quickly meant having all eight of them crammed on the bed together, Maya and Lucas on either end, all six of their children in the middle. If anyone heard this and assumed they were neatly stacked in a row, all limbs kept to themselves, they really had no idea.

No, they were just one giant heap, a giggling mess that sooner or later got Simon and Jack to calm down, secure in their surroundings. It had not been anyone's intention for them to end up falling asleep here, like this, and remaining through the night, but there'd been no way to see this going another way once the kids started to doze off. They guessed that it was just how they were supposed to be on this night, being Jamie's birthday and all. How many more of these nights could they possibly have ahead of them, with everyone continuing to grow as they did? Their children would not be this small forever, so unless they invested in a much wider bed…

Jamie Friar may have been the king of mornings over the past week, but he was no match for his parents when it came to their children's birthdays, and so Maya and Lucas were the first awake on the morning of the seventh of September. It never got old for them to see their children like this, first thing in the morning and still soundly sleeping. They both had memories, some vague, some clear, of being small themselves and waking to find one or both of their own parents in the room with them, greeting them with a good morning and a smile, and they'd had no idea back then what it could mean to them, but they were on this side of it now, all these years later, and if any of their sons or their daughter asked why they were smiling, they would tell them, gladly so. For now, as they all started to wake at roughly the same time…

"Jamie, it's your birthday," Elliott told his little brother even as Noah, between the two of them, closed his arms around the newly three-year-old boy and hugged him.

"Happy birthday, Tadpole!" he told him, even as they were both nearly crushed under the efforts of their younger brothers climbing over their sister. They may have been small, may not have completely understood what was going on, but they saw the hugs and they wanted in on that. It was all kind of a mess, but they made it, one big hug with no one in any distress, and they were off to a great start.

In no time, Ava, Elliott, and Noah were pulling Jamie along to spring their first surprises on him while their parents saw to Simon and Jack and brought them downstairs to start on breakfast.

"Wait!" Jamie came running into the kitchen, barely a minute after they'd started getting things out of the fridge and cupboards, like all he'd needed to hear was one tiny sound from very far away and he'd known what they'd be getting up to. "I want to do it, too," he informed his mother and father, as his siblings caught up to him, pushing up the sleeves of his shirt past his elbows and going to where he knew he would find his personal apron.

"But we have all the…" Elliott protested.

"But there's a lot of…" Noah spoke at the same time.

"Guys, it's no use," Ava told them, indicating their brother, who had climbed on to his foot stool and was having their father tie his apron on for him.

"You know, you can all help, too," Maya told them, trying not to smirk. "It counts." That was good enough. The three older siblings, disappointed as they may have been at the delay on their plans, knew that when it came to Jamie and the kitchen, that was a gift in and of itself. So, they went and got their aprons, too – they'd get called out on it by the birthday boy if they didn't – and they joined in on the breakfast prep.

Jamie had been promised that he'd get to do more once he was a little older, and he considered that he had achieved this that day, so they knew they would have to allow him at least one thing today that they usually said one of the older kids had to do, if not one of the adults outright. They didn't suddenly hand him a giant knife or let him get too close to the oven, but what little progress he was allowed that day made him very happy. As long as he'd helped make the food, he was all good.

"You know, it's a very special thing, having your birthday breakfast so close to where you were born, huh, Tadpole?" Maya teased as they all sat around the table. Lucas had to drop his fork and make sure he wouldn't choke as he laughed, seeing the looks on the children's faces. They all looked around, at varying levels of perplexed. "Right there, on the floor," Maya indicated with her own fork. They all looked under the table. She was sure they'd told at least the older boys about it before, and yet to look at them, they apparently remembered nothing.

"On the floor, Mommy?" Jamie blinked. He only had so much understanding of what happened when babies were born, because of his younger brothers, but this might have been the first time it dawned on him that this was how he'd come into the world, too.

"What happened?" Ava asked. They'd for sure told her some of it, but she looked as clueless as the boys and now she wanted to know. Lucas exchanged a look with his wife, both of them debating how much of the story was appropriate at this time, and with this audience. Still, it felt important, with the night they'd all shared and this morning now, to take them all into this chapter of their family's history.

"Well, he came a little early, not so much that it was too early. And that day, there was a great, big storm. Thunder, and lightning, and a lot of rain…"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners