June 29th 2023

Chapter 180
We Remind By Threes

When next they had a birthday in the house, it felt very similar in many ways from the start. For one, it involved more than one person born on that same day, two on the first and three now. And like it or not, this one as with the first involved disbelief for time's passing and how quickly it could evade them. Sure, this time around the number was significantly smaller, but for belonging to their daughters, to Maya and Lucas, it felt genuinely overwhelming.

Six... Their little butts were six years old this morning, and it didn't feel real. They looked at them, squeezed in together in a single bed, also like the Hunter twins on their birthday, and even though their eyes told them that it was all true, their hearts just would not have it. They were small enough once that they felt almost afraid to touch them, small enough that they could be held securely in one pair of arms. It wasn't so anymore, though they would definitely go around as though it was sometimes, as though the world would only ever fit them all together or they wouldn't know how to function.

"I just can't with them..." Maya signed in the low light as she and Lucas looked on to their sleeping daughters. Lucy was in the middle, the Kacey and Remy pressed in at either side until their faces were all nearly pressed together. And they looked happy, peaceful...

"I don't think spooning can be passed down in your DNA, can it?" Lucas signed back, and Maya just barely got to cover her mouth before any laughter could escape.

"I think they got that one with their eyes just fine," she finally replied, and he nodded. That also worked.

When they saw enough to agree that the girls had for sure started to wake up in earnest, there was really only one thing they wanted to do, and so Maya and Lucas slowly approached from either side, scooping up one each of the twins until they could lie down and bring them to land in a pile, lifting Lucy along with them. It made for immediate squeals and confusion followed by giddiness as they saw their mother and father.

The birthday wishes were received and immediately reciprocated, as the triplets turned to one another to wish their sisters a happy sixth as well. All of them were very glad for where they were just then, and their parents may not have been able to hold them all on their own, but this was pretty good, too. One day they would be big enough that even this wouldn't do, but they weren't worried. This was as good a sign as any that, when the time came, they would adapt.

The pile-up couldn't last forever, and that was okay, too. They had a whole day ahead of them, and there were so many things for them to do. Some of those were already locked in, with breakfast at MA Maggie's - their choice - and the big family and friends dinner later on. The part in between had been left more or less wide open, figuring that they would wait until the day itself came and see what the birthday girls would like to do. It almost felt like a cheat, but just because they'd had a good feeling about what they would choose for a while already: they wanted to go shopping for their school supplies, excited as they were to start the first grade. They would get that, and as much as they would be together, their parents would do their best to give each girl her own time.

They got Kacey aside first, never meaning to go by birth order but ending up that way as Remy and Lucy were staring at a display with their uncle and cousin, while Kacey didn't seem as drawn to it. Maya and Lucas asked for her to come along and she ran the short distance over while they signaled to Wyatt that they wouldn't be far, and he nodded.

Much as they didn't not to cast her in the role, Kacey couldn't help but fill it. She had been the first of the triplets to be born and she had led them, in one way or another, from the day she was born. Maybe lead wasn't the right word exactly, just… Even when she should not have been old enough to understand as much or really anything at all, it seemed that Kacey just knew where she fit in the trio. She was the first to have come along, she was almost always at the front when they all adopted their sort of triangle arrangement as they walked along, and that was really the most telling of who Kacey was, not so much the leader but the protector. She was the happy medium between Remy's wild energy and Lucy's softness, and in that balance she could always look out for them.

The older she got, her parents got to realize how that protectiveness had a way of isolating her at times. She was her sisters' carer, and while they were most of the time of a single mind on a subject, they were also their own people, and something about being the medium between the two also set her aside. She was such a warm and happy little kid, with so much to give. When they took her around on her own, it was both Maya and Lucas' hope that she'd use this time and think of herself, that she'd remember that it wasn't just their birthday, the triplets together, but that it was also her birthday, Kacey Angela Friar's birthday, and her arrival in the first grade. They watched her as she came upon the backpacks, the lunch boxes, all in their colorful arrays and characters, and she picked out one of each, all giddy and jumpy. She couldn't wait to go to school now.

The feeling wasn't exactly not mutual where her twin was concerned, but it was for sure not anywhere near as motivated in Remy's heart. Oh, they weren't surprised, no, not exactly. They looked at her, excited as she was for this shopping trip, and they knew that she was much more excited about getting to pick out new things and bring them home than she was to actually go and sit in class. This was almost entirely to be blamed on something innocent, and just a bit too funny from the outside. It was only that she'd watched her aunts and uncle and others in recent times studying for finals, working on final projects and papers, and they all looked so stressed, so overworked, and she'd gotten it in her head that this was what she would be expected to do, at the tender age of six. It didn't matter that she had seen what her older sister had been doing the past few years in her elementary classes.

Once they'd figured out this was how she'd ended up in this mindset, they had suggested for Marianne to try and hype up her little sister to how good school could be again. Marianne was up to the challenge, of course, and they loved her approach. Remy wasn't so little anymore that she didn't sense some kind of gimmick in all this, but it didn't prevent that Marianne did make some good arguments, which helped Remy feel sufficiently intrigued to go forward. Once they made it to the shopping part, there was genuine promise that she could remember how, not too long ago, she was just as excited as her sisters about going to school 'like the big kids.'

There was no bigger sell to her than to get to write and read more. She'd picked up enough by now to write her own name, and her family members' names – Ella, Annie, Kacey, Lucy, Mack, Aubrey… Mommy, Daddy – and all the letters on their own, just as she could see them and know what they said. But she wanted to be able to do so much more, and they saw it, saw her push herself to get better, and they did everything they could to encourage her on her own path. They showed it here with getting her school supplies, yes, but also some pencils she'd seen and gotten very excited for. She'd start using them almost as soon as they got home.

When it came down to their littlest triplet – she never managed to catch up to the twins enough that people would not see her as the shorter and smaller one – she had a curious sort of reverence toward the supply store as a whole, like something about all the items she saw there, not all of them useful to her at this stage of her life if ever, became preciously intriguing to her. She would pull down a lot of things, anything she could reach on her own, and inspect them delicately and quietly before putting them back, like she was perusing the books in a library. It never stopped being funny, and sweet, and very like her.

They couldn't help but worry about her out there at school sometimes, about how she would cope, and adjust, especially if she found herself separated from the twins. They had been assured, so far as this year's class, that it wouldn't happen, but who knew what the future would bring, right? Oh, she had others around her, and like Kacey and Remy she had gotten better at socializing, at stepping out on her own, but it didn't change the fact that, held up against the new and unfamiliar, she would freeze, and fall back, until her fears made her doubt herself, and fall back on exactly what she knew and what she could trust as infallible. She was still a kid, nothing more to it, but she was their kid, and Maya and Lucas only wanted her to be okay, whatever she faced next.

"Mommy?" she tugged at Maya's arm after she'd selected her school bag and lunch box – none of them identical, as they'd thought the trio's might be.

"Yeah, bun?" Maya asked her. Lucy didn't say a word, only swivelled to look at something on a nearby shelf, dangling from a hook that she could not reach. When she saw it, Maya smiled and went to retrieve it. Something like a fidget toy, which she could have clipped to the side of her bag. When it was handed to her, Lucy held on to it like she might never let go of it once school started. Hopefully, no one would take issue with it.

When all was said and done, the group returned home with their many purchases, all the better for the birthday girls to go and immediately show what they'd gotten to their sisters. They were so happy with their choices, especially with the bags. Marianne did as she would and was the very impressed big sister. Mackenzie was a bit upset that she didn't get to do everything that her older sisters did and threw a tiny fit, while Aubrey just wanted to try and take everything, to put it in each triplet's bag. It wouldn't all fit, nor was it meant to, but what she was able to put inside made the bags feel that much more alive. It made them into the symbols they were, far more than any candles on a cake, that the girls were all growing up. First grade already… six years old… They were still small, sure, and next to Marianne, or even Mackenzie nowadays, even Aubrey, they looked and felt smaller, too. But oh, they had been so small once, so, so small. And now today, as they prepared to start 'big kid school' before long… They felt like giants.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners