A/N - Hey Readers! Thanks for tuning in! This is a project I've had cooking in my brain for the better part of a year now. I adore Carole and Finn in scenes together and I've found I really enjoy writing for them. Glee did NOT make the best use of Romy Rosemont by a kajillion miles either... so this is sort of my vindication on her behalf. I didn't really want to jump into a new chaptered fic bc (clears throat and hangs head in shame) I've already got entirely too many unfinished ones in the pipeline, but Carole was SCREAMING at me the past few days and she just INSISTED she be heard! So. I've got an outline and a plan, and a few chapters done. The first full chapter or two will probably be the longest as I'm establishing some background details, but going fwd I intend for most of the chapters to be pretty short, or to condense several glee eps into one chapter. Maybe this fic will run through college (or beyond), maybe it will only run through S1. Haven't decided yet.

You'll tell me if you want more, I hope? =)

PROLOGUE

I've been on this planet for forty-three years. If I lived another forty-three (crossing my fingers and knocking on wood, maybe a pinch of salt over the shoulder and a wish upon a shooting star for good measure) I don't know if I'll ever know a man I'm more proud of than my son.

He is the BEST thing I've done with the time I've been given on this earth so far, and I really don't see how I can top that feat... especially after (and perhaps despite) the complete hell he's been known to put me through on occasion.

My life has been, well, nothing that extraordinary so far. Wife at nineteen, pregnant at twenty, widow and single mother by twenty-one. Times were different back then (and really, isn't that what every generation says to the next?) maybe they were simpler... maybe there wasn't so much pressure to grow up so fast, to rush to be an adult.

I grew up fast because I had to... because a boy found me and I found a boy and we were so crazy over the moon in love. He wanted to marry me the moment I turned eighteen but I wasn't ready yet so I accepted his ring and made him wait a while. (The waiting was more about following my mother's advice than my own heart. She hoped I'd find a direction after graduation that didn't necessarily lead directly to domestication so quickly – not that she didn't like Chris, quite the opposite; she just wanted me to take a minute and maybe find my own path before settling down so soon... I already knew where my path was leading, though. So I appeased her for a year then I married him anyway.)

But then that boy left me. Went off to war and never really came back. Losing Christopher, especially so young, was the first (and still biggest) trauma in my life. When you're that age, you still think you're invincible and there's this concept of having all the time in the world to do all the things you can ever dream up. The idea of consequence isn't crystallized yet, at least not in that big grown-up way. Sometimes dreams end abruptly though. Sometimes Cinderella's glass slipper shatters and she never gets the prince, and instead is doomed to suffer a life of hard labor (not that she'd complain about it because she's humble like that).

I do NOT regret marrying Chris or having Finn. I just wish my son knew just how much a mirror of his father he truly is. I wish Chris had made different choices back then. Then maybe my son would have grown up looking at life through a different lens sometimes, had another set of shoulders to cry on or be held upon sometimes... then again, I suppose if he had, he wouldn't be the person he is now: a magnificent young man with a huge heart and the only truly extraordinary thing in my life.

I kind of marvel at the wonder of my son and his leadership skills, his conviction, his determination... he never gives up on the things that matter to him most, and he's never lost sight of who he is (well, not for long; we all stumble sometimes). When I look back on everything that boy has been through, and seeing how his life has turned out, well, once I get past all my frustrations and my desire to stand on a mountain and scream WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING at various points – I know he came out better than I ever could have hoped on the other side of it all.

And why shouldn't he when he's had her at his side through so much of it?

You probably already know who she is, but we'll get to that in due course.

Before I tell you where our journey ends, I'd like to tell you how it began. So if you have the time, take a walk down memory lane with me? It might be a bumpy ride sometimes, but it's the path I found myself on and followed my son along, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.