May 11th 2023

Chapter 131 We Remember How We Became

Dear Mrs. Friar,

I remembered the other day that your birthday was coming up. I don't know if you remember me mentioning it, but as soon as I found out when your birthday was, I knew I would never forget it, because it was the day after my sister's last birthday. It wasn't her real birthday, that was in December, but she'd been so sick when the real one happened, so we'd decided we'd do something, me and her, the next time she had a good day, and that was that day. After she passed, every year, our parents would celebrate the day she was born, but I would do my own thing, on her 'good day birthday,' something that reminded me of her, not when she was sick, not when she died. She would be thirty next year if she'd lived, more than twice what she actually got.

That was yesterday, and like every year I've done this, it felt really good to remember her, to exist with my memories. Now, today, I want to do things that will remind me of you and the years when I was in school with you, with the quiz team… I'll let you know how it goes, but I wanted to write and let you know and wish you a happy birthday, so that's why I'm e-mailing instead of sending a paper letter. There'll be one of those later, after the day's over, but I didn't want to miss the chance to tell you: Happy birthday, Mrs. Friar! I hope you have a great day.

All the best,
Rosemary Adewumi

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Dear Rosemary,

Well, imagine my surprise when I got your e-mail this morning. I got woken up by my nephew's crying upstairs, and I brought him down for a bit of quiet time with his favorite aunt (self-appointed, maybe, but we all know it's true), where I found your message waiting. It warms my heart to

X

Maya looked up from her phone when she heard voices in the early morning stillness. Finneas was soundly asleep as she held him in one arm and lightly swayed from one foot to the other and typed at her screen, but overhead, she'd definitely caught the voices of a few of her young daughters. Even if she couldn't make out exactly what they were saying, the tone was recognizable and boiled down to something like 'where's Mommy, we have to find her and jump on her because it's her birthday and that's the rule.'

"What do you think, Finn, should we hide?" Maya whispered down to the seven-month-old. He remained asleep, one hand gripping at her shirt. "Yeah, that won't work very long, you're absolutely right," Maya told him, as though he had contributed to the conversation. "I do like the idea of sneaking up on them, yeah? That'd be funny, but you probably wouldn't think so right now, would you? No, probably not. Hold on, I've got an idea."

Upstairs, Lucas had a vague notion of being half awake and Maya letting him know that she was going up to check on Finn before he had very quickly fallen back to sleep. The next time he'd woken up, about a minute or two ago, was when his daughters' voices had travelled into his subconscious and compelled him to wake. There was still some part of him that was able to forget his current condition and feel the drive to jump out of bed and go see what they were up to, but he got that in check before he could do anything overly damaging to himself. The fact that he could go off and find them was good enough for now.

The thing that had them all perplexed, as they had clearly looked in on him already, was that their mother wasn't in there with him. That was not what they'd had in mind for that morning, and it was apparently highly inconvenient for them to now have to pivot on their big plans.

Lucas was still near enough to his and Maya's room that he heard his phone vibrating on his nightstand and turned back to go check it out. It was a good thing that he'd gone, too, as he found a message from his wife, letting him know that she was downstairs, with the sleeping Finn, on the verge of being discovered by a band of loud excited little blondes, which would not mesh well with their littler cousin.

"Hey, woah, hey," Lucas moved into the hall, just before the girls made it to the stairs. They turned to him, blue eyes everywhere. Seeing him at least got most of them to run back, excited to hug him and tell him good morning. "Good morning to you, too," he smirked down at them. Remy still had a bandage on her chin, not the same as the one she'd gotten on the day, which was admittedly an interesting way of differentiating her from her identical twin. "Listen, your mother is downstairs…" he started, which threatened to send the pack running at once. "Wait, wait, hold on," he called again, and they looked at him. "She's got Finneas with her and he's asleep, so you can't go in there and shout, do you understand?"

In response, Lucy signed that she understood. This made him smile. All the girls had grown up learning sign language, just as Marianne had done, and it was eternally amusing to see how each of them learned the gestural language and expressed herself with it. Each of them was completely true to herself in the way she signed and each of them sounded like herself and how she spoke, if that could make sense. Lucy was soft and fluid, Remy was sharp and excitable, Kacey was somewhere in the middle and over all the one who learned the quickest out of the three. Mackenzie was comical, and Aubrey was sweet… They loved to have this extra way of communicating with one another, and if they ever saw anyone out in the world who conversed in ASL, they would want nothing more than to go and show that they could do it, too.

On this day, their mother's birthday, it aided them as they ran down – as quiet on their feet as they could manage – and came to find her. When they got there, they signed as largely as they could, to suggest their excitement, and wished her a happy, happy birthday.

"Thank you so much," Maya signed back, and the girls smiled at her. They crowded around her legs, never disrupting the sleeping baby, and she felt her heart as full and happy as she could want it on a day like this. Naturally, they would find a way to challenge that before very long.

Wyatt came down before long to retrieve his son, who woke peacefully to find his father's face as he did most every morning. Nellie and Gracie came down together, looking nearly as disappointed as their nieces had done that their older sister hadn't been in bed longer, the better to be surprised. But now there she was, and she was no longer entrusted with a sleeping baby, so they were able to come along, one on either side of her, so they could sandwich her into a good squeeze of a hug and some kisses on each side of her face.

They didn't make it as far as breakfast before the sisters went and sprung their first surprise on their mother. It was a school day, after all, and they couldn't just send her off to work without doing something first. And as it was sometimes something they did, on special occasions, they went the way of telling a story. This one was special, perfect for this special day, because there may not have been any picture evidence, and neither of their parents had actually been there for the event they were about to speak of, not near enough to have been aware at least, but it very much was the story that needed telling on their mother's birthday.

"Alright…" Maya responded to this claim, as curious as Lucas was for the next part. "Let's hear it then. When did it happen?" Five faces turned toward Marianne with the haste of uncertainty, as though to say, 'you know what to say here, not us.'

"The other day," Marianne informed her mother, nodding slowly. "We were in a store," she added, just flighty enough to establish that she didn't want to say which store and what for. It was as much of an answer as Maya could need.

"So, what happened there?" she asked innocently. With the 'hurdle' surpassed, everyone appeared to breathe easier. They could finish the story now.

As they managed to explain, with one girl and another jumping in left and right to add her own perspective, they had been at the store and a song had come on over the radio, playing all through the store. It was one of their mother's songs, one of the ones she had written for Ree Forster, whose voice they could all hear over the speakers. They could all recognize 'Auntie Ree' very easily, but they had to be reminded – by Marianne – that their mother was the one who had made the song to begin with. That brief reminder was all that they needed, and then they had every bit of information that they needed. Before long, they were all six of them singing along, together.

Lucas vaguely remembered hearing the singing, but it was something that happened in some shape or form almost every day of their lives, so he hadn't thought too much of it or captured the same meaning as his daughters did. To them, from their tall pumpkin down to their lucky youngest, it had felt like something so wonderful, to be there, all together, singing as one to their mother's words. They couldn't remember ever feeling as united as they'd done in that moment, united as sisters, as lovers of music, and as daughters of their mother's.

Hearing the story, conjuring up the scene in her head, Maya felt exactly the extra burst of emotion she had known to expect. Whether or not she'd known to wait for it, there was just no way to know the precise weight of that hit, not until it landed and left her feeling how fortunate she truly was to have each and every one of those girls that she and Lucas had made and brought into the world. She could not imagine her life without a single one of them.

"Just so you know, you might have a few more visitors at lunch than usual," Lucas told his wife before she could leave for work that day. She looked at him like she really was this close to teetering over and the day was still so young. "I figured you might like to have that to look forward to."

"You know me so well," she shook her head and moved forward to kiss him. He responded in kind, and the way she held to him, he could imagine that it would have taken next to nothing for her to decide to call in sick for the day and bear the consequences later. But instead, she took a deep, bracing breath. She was going to go alright. She was going to go, and she was going to carry her happiness with her, and it would spread out to everyone she met. And at lunch, visitors…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners