June 1st 2023

Chapter 152
We Have Many Roles To Play

Maya already felt bad for not being able to attend parent teacher night on the parent side when it was only Marianne's teachers that they had to meet twice a year, and now that they had added the triplets... Last time, she had ranted heavily, stating that this somehow had to be Davenport's doing, and he'd been happy to shift the blame along with her and watch her be her comically imaginative self. Now, here they were again, and as before, the two nights coincided. They hadn't needed to say a thing. Once they'd figured out that this was the case, they'd only needed to look at each other, and her expression had made him smile with sympathy.

For the time being, at least, seeing to the triplets was a single if extended stop. He was very aware of the fact that a lot had happened between the last time he'd gone to see the girls' teacher and now, chief among them his attack back in November. Nothing that they'd seen or heard over the last several months, other than in the very beginning, which had been completely understandable, had indicated that their five-year-old daughters were in any kind of distress that needed to be addressed. What he was told that night would more or less put those concerns to rest.

Being told about how Kacey showed a lot of care for others, a lot of good leading instincts, was not surprising. That was just who she'd always been, wasn't it? At least it had been so with her fellow triplets. Their little cub was the happy medium between loud Remy and quiet Lucy, she brought balance, and they knew it. Remy and Lucy would look to her input on most any difficult decisions, as difficult as they could be at their age. But now she was growing, and she was interacting with more people, more kids, and Lucas was happy to hear that those qualities in her had expanded to enfold them, too.

With Remy, there was some concern that they'd be told she caused trouble, with the way she could be, and it wasn't exactly that in the end, no, but to hear it from her teacher, it would only be a matter of time. They were well aware of her impatient tendencies, and sometimes they presented as something more like impulsivity. It was one thing when she was at home, with her family, but school was different, and the sooner she understood this, the better off she would be as she moved forward. Lucas saw the merit in this and promised to look into it with Maya. Mostly, in his mind, he wondered about what would happen the first time - and it was bound to happen - when she would be separated from Kacey or Lucy or both of them, in one class or another.

This wouldn't have been inaccurate for the others either, of course, maybe Kacey least of all, but then Remy, and... oh, Lucy... It was no surprise to hear that she had struggles of her own, and these ones in particular. Of their trio, it was easy to see she had been most affected by what had happened to her father and everything afterward. She had always been their quiet one, their clingy one, and since November, she'd reverted the closest to the girl she'd been when she'd started preschool as a three-year-old. Her teacher was very understanding, which helped, but it was as important to her as it was to Lucas and would be to Maya that they help her get past this phase, to catch up again to where the twins were.

x

There was plenty of temptation for her to ask Lucas to keep her updated throughout the night, to write her and let her know how his time with the girls' teachers went, but that would get her nowhere. It was better that they should wait and talk it all out once both of them were home, and until then, she had more than enough to do to keep her mind occupied, like sitting with parent after parent for a few hours.

Her first slate was familiar as much for the people involved as for the mood that they would bring with them this time around. It would be the last time she met with all of them here, as their children would be graduating in a matter of weeks. As she would do each year, this section of her appointments would be a mix between of a retrospective and a farewell. There were snacks and - appropriate on school grounds - beverages. They would tend to come away from this short stop in her class feeling relaxed and ready to get through the rest of their night, which was Maya's intention. She had introduced this tactic once she'd become familiar with the... intensity that came with parents of near graduates. There was so much going on with them, the prospect of their children leaving home, starting out on their own... She understood that, now more than ever, with her eldest out there for the past few years. That was when the snacks had appeared.

After the seniors, it was on to the sophomores, very soon to begin the second half of their four years with her. It was hard to believe at any time when she'd start to see that a class of freshmen was moving up in the world of the school, but she had to admit that this one was easily one of the biggest blows, only topped by the realization that they would soon graduate. She thought of Freddie and Noor, a moment ago brand new faces to her, barely reunited with one another. Now they'd been side by side moving through school for nearly two years even as they moved independently, too. She thought of Austin Abbott, who had made such strides since his first day, shoved into his locker, most of all on the squad. And she thought of Agnes Killian, who had been from the beginning a calm, warm presence wherever she went. Maya could always count on her to be there if she needed a volunteer for anything, whether she'd known she would need one or not. When all their parents would come and sit with her, she would be able to sing those praises, and she would happily do so. Not every student that came through her class was earning the same kind of praise, some of them having little ground to work on, but she always tried to find something good to say, and she would find it, no lies or embellishments required.

Now with her next group, with the freshmen, the connections between the parents and the art teacher were even newer than with the students and her, unless of course they'd all been through this dance in the past, with one or more older siblings, or if they already knew one another. Maya had a few of those this year, unlike last year. She didn't need to look any further than… right down the road, to where the Dixons lived. Both she and Amy, she knew, had been eagerly looking forward to the moment when she'd become one of her students, and once parent night came around, sitting with her mother in this kind of setting… They had to find a way to pivot from one connection to another. With someone like Jake Bennett, never mind that his big sister was graduating this year, but his mother was a close family friend, having been one of Lucas' basketball teammates for the last few years. And then Max Farrell, his family was close to hers as well, through his sister, his parents, now his cousins… Max McAllister might have been outside of that bracket, but to ask it of Marianne, who loved her third grade teacher, Miss Ingrid, they might as well have been family.

By the time she made it to the juniors, it was difficult not to get caught up in thinking of how long her day had been, and how much she was looking forward to getting home to Lucas and their girls. That didn't mean she had checked out mentally. She would be there, happy to talk about each of those kids with their parents, the same with the first senior all through to the final junior. If she wanted to stack things in her favor, she could have set her father last of all, there for MJ, and Keith Reyes right before him, for Lydia. Shawn would make some 'noise,' remembering when he'd been there for Nellie and Gracie the previous year, when there had been snacks, and Maya would offer him some pity leftovers (his words, not hers). Keith would find it hardly necessary to discuss how Lydia was doing in art class, seeing as he had a direct line with her teacher at any time, so he and Maya would mostly sit together and use their allotted time to talk about anything.

This year, by reason of a delay with a couple of their other teachers, Maya's last appointment of the night would be with Ash's father. He had not forgotten what she had done for him and his family, enabling his younger daughter, Kennedy, to return and live with him, and helping to set him on his way to reforging his relationship with his firstborn. He was still having to find his rhythm with having his children back, but he was giving it his all, and Maya recognized that, for herself and with him. He was doing great.

X

For the last few weeks now, ever since the end of the year had started to feel close, whenever Lucas or Maya were at their daughters' school and they ran into Zay, the fourth grade teacher would go on about how excited he was to finally get to have his very own Friar girl in his class, starting in the fall. This was almost as much Zay being Zay as it was him being hyper aware that he had a tough act to follow thanks to Ingrid McAllister and wanting to make sure that Marianne would be excited for what was to come. For now, she was still very much in the realm of her third grade class and her beloved teacher, and to hear her go on about the nine-year-old, Mrs. McAllister felt just the way that she did.

She had been very good about backing up Marianne on those few days where she'd had to miss school for musical reasons, making sure that she'd be all caught up with what she had missed out on. She had done the same across the weeks that had followed his attack and his subsequent hospital stay, and Lucas had never really had a proper opportunity to thank her for that, so he did so now. He knew that she would consider it the least she could do, as his wife would have done the same, but coming from his side of the whole situation, it felt far from the least and much nearer to the absolute most. Marianne had been so fortunate to find a kindred spirit in her teacher this year, and as far as he was concerned, every one of his younger daughters would be truly blessed if she ended up in Mrs. McAllister's class as well. Having seen the way they each brightened up at the sight of her, on those few occasions where they'd run into one another outside of school, he was very confident in the assumption that all of them were hoping to be there, too. They still had a few years to wait before any of them got there, but the way things were going, he was sure it would all be happening before they knew it.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners