Word Count: 2371
Summary: "You can let it go/You can start a family who will always show you love" Based slightly on Harry Styles Matilda, but also small parts of others songs that started playing as I wrote.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Big Bang Theory or the characters.
When he first met Howard, he was just a creepy engineer who told the most disgusting jokes and told girls the worst pickup lines. Still, he opened the doors of his home, and despite the jokes he made about his mother, they could all tell he loved her dearly.
Debbie would spend the next years offering them dinner, cookies, and lots of hugs. Despite her voice traveling through the walls and sounding so angry all the time even if she was the happiest ever, they had plenty of conversations that ended with her hugging him. After the first few hugs, Leonard grew comfortable when she gave him the motherly love he had never gotten before and found himself missing the warm embrace of his friend's mother.
She felt particularly sad when he told her (as if it was no big deal because to him it had never been a big deal, just his normal) that he never had big family dinners or nights just watching television on the couch or game nights. She started inviting them over more often after that, and despite their objections from time to time, they all found themselves craving those simple nights.
As years went by, those nights became a tradition. Just as they had comic book and Halo nights, they had dinner at the Wolowitz's house. Penny was particularly fascinated by this the first time she came along because Mrs. Wolowitz had gotten mad at them for not inviting the girl over already. When she sat down in the dining room next to him, Mrs. Wolowitz stuffed her plate with more food than she would eat in an entire day saying she was too skinny.
Something they all found themselves hearing over the years from that woman.
Still, despite the motherly love Howard had – and seemed okay with sharing with the rest of the gang – he had stayed the same creepy engineer. Until that is, he met Bernadette.
And now, as Leonard looked at the family of three, he couldn't help remembering the woman who was no longer with them. The woman who would've loved to meet her granddaughter, the woman who wouldn't be able to stop smiling. Probably a bigger smile than the one that didn't seem to leave her face when they all came through her front door, her arms prepared to hug them all except Sheldon. Though the tall genius was okay with the pat on the shoulder he would receive from her.
Leonard didn't get that motherly love growing up. The love he saw Mary having for Sheldon whenever she visited, the look in her eyes for a little Sheely, the words of advice, the happiness in her voice. The same love he had seen Penny's mother show her when they visited her parent's farm a few years back. Love she had given him too, because I'm your mother too now, Leonard she had told him when she first saw him. The love that Raj was shown to have gotten growing up, which they all witnessed during his parents' calls.
He had only met Bernadette and Amy's mothers once, during their wedding. Even those women had so much love in their eyes despite their complicated personalities.
So, watching his friends becoming parents for the first time, and especially witnessing Howard become a father, was an eye-opener. People could change and become better. All, but his own parents.
It wasn't that his father was a terrible one. He just wasn't around, which caused more harm than good, Leonard realized as an adult. As a child he had been thrilled whenever his father did appear, when he didn't make up some lame excuse and left his brother and him at the curb of their house, backpacks next to them prepared for whatever office their father was getting them stuck in.
His mother was unfortunately present. Even if sometimes she had been busy with book tours and conferences, she did appear in everything he took part in. If it wasn't for the mean, awful comments she gave him and the eventual book written about him, one could say she was a good mother. He wouldn't be the one though.
But Bernadette had a complicated personality, and even if she was looking at Halley with the same look of love and adoration he had witnessed his friends' parents give their children.
A similar look Mrs. Wolowitz would give their makeshift family. The look Penny's mom gave him the first time she saw him. One could say a similar look that Mary Cooper would give him too.
He could feel the love they had for their baby, which made Leonard wonder if, at any point in his life, his mother had given him that look. Or had looked at his siblings the same way too. Probably – most likely – she hadn't. His father had, but it wasn't the same because every time his father looked at him all he remembered was all the promises to be there and then looking for him and finding an empty seat next to his mother. All the other parents had cameras in their hands and the biggest smile on their faces.
The kind of parents he knew his friends were going to be.
They were going to be the parents who would hug their children, that would go to all their school events, and hold them when they cried. That wouldn't make excuses that were just lies. Actually be a part of their lives. The parents that he knew Mrs. Wolowitz had been to Howard, the parent she had been for all of those kids who once showed up in her home and she let in.
They would listen to their children's problems, offer comforting words, applaud their successes, and support in their failures. Their safe haven, in some way. They wouldn't always be the best parents, they would feel like they failed at some point, because most parents in their group had said that to them all.
But they would be the kind of parents to try their best to fix it. That would open the door of their home for their children's friends if they ever needed a place to stay. He could see Bernie being the mother who would give her children's friends hugs and hear them out whenever they needed to vent; he could see Howard give them advice, maybe even build rockets with them.
It was fitting that they stayed in her house. They would continue on with what Mrs. Wolowitz started. Maybe that would mean that someday Halley would find a group of misfits that felt they didn't belong anywhere and show them her house and her parents, who would welcome them with open arms like Mrs. Wolowitz had done to all of them all those years ago.
And maybe there was going to be in that group a person whose home life was everything but functional and happy but then would find themselves in a house where they had so much love that they wouldn't even know what to do with it. Where the dining table always has a plate set for them, and there's always food being cooked in the kitchen just in case someone comes in unannounced. The door to the house is always open for friends, friends that become so inseparable that they turn into family.
And because of the dysfunctional family that the child had been a part of, they will most likely find it strange when suddenly there's a mother who wants to teach them how to cook more than rice and soft-boiled eggs. That will teach them actual dishes, that won't get upset when they mess up, that will be sweet and kind, and whose immediate reaction to a broken plate isn't anger but worry. That child will find themselves being put on bandages and is going to be asked every day they go to that house how they are.
He can see Bernadette taking care of one of Halley's friends the way Ms. Wolowitz took care of him. Love and compassion and worry. Genuine happiness whenever he would tell her good news, even if she didn't understand what he did for a living. To her, he was one of Howard's buddies from school, not one of her son's coworkers from a major university. But he was okay with whatever she thought he was, just as long as she continued to be as kind as she was.
She was one of the first people in his life who seemed to actually care about him, after his uncle Floyd and his sister. Then he moved away from them and found his friend's mom, who was the most welcoming person he had met.
And now, even she was gone.
But his friends seemed somewhat content in the moment, holding their daughter. Though there were some moments he caught both looking at the pictures on the walls, stopping at one where Mrs. Wolowitz was in – usually the one in their wedding – and they both would look sad for a moment, before resuming the task of watching their daughter once more.
And Leonard found himself without knowing what to do because all he wanted at that moment was to get a time machine – a workable one, not one like the one he had previously bought all those years ago – and get himself back to the day he met her. He couldn't decide between ignoring her attempts to have them over or just reliving certain moments once again. Maybe tell her all about her granddaughter whenever she and Howard seemed particularly angrier at each other to make her feel better.
Though if he was honest, ignoring her seemed to be a good idea, because it would save him from the grief he still currently felt even after all the years had passed. But he would eventually feel guilty because it wasn't like him to do that sort of thing, and Mrs. Wolowitz had always been such a good mother to them all.
Especially considering she didn't have to be. It had never been her job to take care of them, they were all someone else's children. Most of them had loving mothers, they knew what motherly love was, and they had felt it growing up. She didn't have to go through all the trouble of teaching him things his parents should've taught him. Like cooking or tying his tie.
Penny had tried – and miserably failed – to teach him how to tie it. Even after several YouTube tutorials, every single one of the ties came off with the back part bigger than the front. Or just a noose.
But his friend's mom somehow found out about his struggle and decided to help him. After three hours, several moments he caught himself nearly crying for struggling to do something that seemed so simple for others – he ended up shedding some tears and Mrs. Wolowitz had comforted him saying it was okay – he left the Wolowitz's house knowing not only how to tie a tie but also a bowtie. Proud of himself for that, he found himself teaching Penny how to do it properly as well. Mostly because he was so proud to have done it.
She was impressed.
And so was Mrs. Wolowitz apparently, at least she seemed to, because the first time he showed up at her house with Raj and Sheldon to pick up Howard to some faculty party, she had looked at him, and then at the tie, and then smiled at him before patting him in the shoulder and saying, 'nice tie'. Didn't mention Sheldon's tie – that Leonard had tied himself – or Raj's. He took that compliment to the party and never really left him.
Sheldon had been thankful for the improvement of his culinary skills, that now passed the breakfast food and got into meals he had categorized as lunch and dinner foods – as a former college student who had lived in an apartment with other people that didn't really cook, Leonard found himself confused as to why waffles weren't considered dinner. At some point, everyone else was also thankful for Leonard's ability to learn and Mrs. Wolowitz's ability to remain calm whenever he made a mistake.
If anything, every interaction he had with her just invalidated every parenting book his mother had written.
After they all decided to leave the new parents to enjoy their little family, they started to leave the house, but the picture of the Rostenkowski-Wolowitz wedding was right in front of the front door and Leonard found himself staring at it.
Bernadette gives him a smile he doesn't see because his back is facing her.
"She would've loved to have met her; don't you think?"
He doesn't seem to get spoked by her voice, almost as if he was expecting her. Turning to her, he returns the smile he now sees. "She would've loved her from the moment she knew about her existence." He looks towards his shoes for a second to keep the tears at bay. "I have no doubt."
Bernadette seems to be caught with the emotion too, and it wasn't just due to the hormones floating in her body.
"She was built to be a grandmother."
The sweet moment is broken by the eerily similar to her grandmother's voice cries, but Bernadette doesn't go tend to her daughter immediately. Instead, she steps forward and envelopes him in a tight hug that she wasn't sure was just to soothe him.
"I miss her too."
Almost as soon as the hug starts it ends, and Bernadette leaves him at the entrance of that house to tend to her daughter's needs.
He was right. He couldn't wait to witness the children their daughter would bring over; a new group of people being raised by the amazing mothers that were the Wolowitzs.
The End
Started off based on Harry Styles' Matilda, found myself just interested in Mrs. Wolowitz character – never wrote about her before – and then based this story on Cian Ducrot's I'll Be Waiting.
It was also interesting to play a little with the idea that at least Leonard saw Bernie as a good mother as opposed to what she thought. I also used as inspiration that whole talk to Raj's dad, because Bernadette is an interesting character that I have trouble writing but slightly love – mostly the amazing character she could've been if the writers didn't ruin her so much.