January 27th 2024
Chapter 27
The Surprise in Pumpkins
She looked just as she'd looked the night before, even more so as she slept. But they would look at her, their baby girl, their firstborn, and she suddenly felt so grown to them, impossibly so. Their brains rushed with memories of her, as a baby, as a toddler, their small Sheriff Annie… and now here was this very tall child, asleep between them. And she was twelve years old. They didn't know exactly when she'd shown up, but they had expected her to come, so when they both woke up and found her there, they simply welcomed her presence. When she opened her eyes, too, and saw them looking down at her, she just smiled, burrowing herself against her mother, the better to be showered in kisses.
"Happy Hallowannie," Maya whispered, and Marianne nodded. She was giving big signs of her struggle to fall asleep and, in consequence, feeling very apprehensive at the thought of leaving this cozy space just now, and they felt for her, but they didn't have much of a choice, did they? They looked to one another, trying to think of what to say to get her out. Lucas held up a finger. He had just the thing. He leaned closer to Marianne's ear and said two words.
"Twelve pumpkins…"
She collected Ezra from his little bed to come along with her before leaving the room. Even as they went into the hallway, there were the triplets, coming from their room, possibly with the same thing on their minds but pausing now to wish their sister a happy birthday. Down the hall, Mackenzie and Aubrey had stepped out of the green room, having found no trace of their big sister, and so they all ended up in the hall together, the better to discover the full dozen of the painted mini pumpkins.
Marianne had grown to the point where the pumpkins exceeded the letters of her name by a third, which was really not a problem for Maya, who thrived on the challenge. The bigger thing here was that painting twelve small pumpkins in hiding was a time consuming project, which would have been the case already without having doubled her class load or having seven, soon eight children to see to. Lucas was, as ever, right there to back her up, as she backed him up at any given time, but this was only going to keep being complicated if they added another pumpkin every year.
"You don't have to do it, Mom," Marianne told her as they stood in the bathroom, working on her hair for her costume. It was Maya, Lucas, MJ, and Gracie that morning on hair duty, with all the kids in need of assistance for their costume transformation ahead of school, all over the house, but Maya had gotten to see to the birthday girl, and she was very happy for it.
"What, the braid?" Maya smirked, knowing the response she'd get. The braid was essential here. "What don't I need to do?" she asked, getting them back on track.
"All the pumpkins," Marianne told her. "Imagine when I'm sixteen, or twenty…"
"I'm trying really hard not to," Maya muttered to herself.
"Or like thirty? That's too many," Marianne continued without missing a beat.
"It really is," Maya hummed. "So what are you saying? You want me to stop?" she asked.
"No!" Marianne blurted out, and Maya smiled. "I mean… No, not stopping, but at least… It doesn't have to be one for every year."
"If that works for you, then sure, but what were you thinking?"
"I'm not sure… I'll think about it." Maya smiled again, kissed the top of her head.
"Well, we have a year to figure it out."
It was her routine, year to year, to wear the evening costume from the previous year while she was at school, and she'd kept it up every time unless she had reason to change it. The night Marianne was born, she'd been dressed as Claire from Lost, which made sense, but then the next year she hadn't been pregnant anymore, so she had to switch it up. This year, she wasn't so big yet that she couldn't have reasonably put on her costume from the year before, but she also felt strongly about the fact that she wouldn't feel like changing again when she got home, so she just went ahead and wore the costume she would wear all through day and evening.
She met Freddie at the bench, as had become their thing, and he of course picked up on the fact that she wasn't wearing the costume from the year before. He didn't actually bring it up, which she appreciated. He had his own costume on, ready for the time he'd spend with them before he had to go to his own classes. She was really looking forward to seeing what he'd be up to.
The classroom transformation was a big hit as always, especially with those who were with her for the first time. Between the decorations and the costumes, this day was always going to be a bit off center, so Maya decided to use it to finally lock down the year's big projects for every class. They would already be two months into the year, which had made sense to her, especially with the art school upgrade, but now they really had to get on with it. She'd at least mentioned it before, especially with the freshmen. The other levels, if they'd been with her last year, had already done this before. All options were put on the table for them, they could pick any one of them that they wished. If they had an idea that was not on the list, they could suggest it, of course, so long as they remembered that they might be denied if it was something they could not accomplish within their means at the school. If the idea was accepted there, it would be up to the class to decide what they wanted to go with.
The seniors were near evenly divided in their preferences, and if they hadn't been so neatly opposed to one another, she might have said they could do both, but they really had to choose. As debates went, it really couldn't have been funnier if they tried. Not everyone was in a costume, though there were definitely more than most years, she noted, but even so, they were in her very transformed classroom, which made everything feel a bit… fantastical and ridiculous. In the end, it came down to the pottery side, and as disappointed as she could see some of the other side being, she made it her first plan to make sure they'd all have a great time with this project, too, even if it hadn't been their choice from the very beginning.
With the AP Freshmen after them, it was less about there being a split as there having too many choices. This was their first year with her, and they were being given free rein on this, within reason. How were they ever meant to choose? This turned the period into something of a process of elimination. All the ideas were put on the board, whittled down to three choices, and then two. They were a bit stuck there, which Maya was glad to see came from a place of their wanting to do both and not that they were hard set on one side over the other. She could work with that. All they had to decide was which one they wanted to do this year and then the next. They could do both, would do both, especially if they were this motivated by their choices. They could even do their third place and fourth place choices in the years after that. So, they chose to kick things off by exploring mosaics.
The sophomores had spent the better part of last year creating a comic book with her and her visiting lecturer of a brother, published comic author and artist Sam Calahart. When she asked them what they wanted to do for their second year's project, they all had great memories lingering of the work they had done the year before. A lot of them were very proud of what they had created, and others, while they wished they would have done better, felt just like them: they wanted to do more. Was that something they could do? That was an easy answer. Even if it would just be her, she would gladly do it, but if it could be her and Sam together again, that would be even better. She promised the class that she would see what she could do.
When she next met with the other half of that class of former freshmen and posed them the same question, they had a similar response. They had all loved what they had done, and while they would love to carry on what they had started, there was another aspect that interested them, one that very soon manifested itself into a winning idea. They wanted to stay in the realm of comic books, but they wanted to focus less on them creating anything and more on the work of others, on styles, and influences, and colors, all of it, looking at different eras and cultures… They had all the motivation in their eyes and Maya would naturally respond to that the only way she could. She would spend the better part of lunch on the phone with Sam, the two of them figuring out how they could pull this off. He was in, so that was a start.
Her regular freshmen were just as uncertain where to go as their AP classmates. Even when they were reminded that any project they didn't choose now could be used over the next three years, they continued to struggle with making up their minds. It took until what really felt like the very last seconds of the period for them to make up their minds. This involved a lot of twists and turns, all in the attempt to find which things they wanted to do the most, bringing it down to four choices. They were pretty satisfied with those, but choosing… Finally, the options were written down and placed in a bowl before one was picked out at random. They were all happy with the winner, so they would try their hands at sculpture.
The AP juniors were next, and they surprised her by having an idea they stuck to almost immediately. They'd done portraits the year before, and they wanted to continue this year, to take what they had already learned and become even better at it. She liked this for them, so they locked this down right away and celebrated it by having a session of speed portraits for the rest of the period, putting the costumed students in the spotlight. This was all good and fine, but there was no way they wouldn't want to draw their teacher, too, so she agreed to pose for them on the condition that she would be last to go, once everyone was done, and that they would present her with the results, whatever they may be. When the period ended, she had a stack of those portraits to look at, some of them making her laugh, others cry, all of them with pride and joy.
The AP seniors had a harder time of coming to a final choice, though only in part. They quickly came down to wanting to focus on one period or another, and Maya was all for it. The big question then was figuring out which period they would pick. There were plenty of them to choose from, and unlike the others, they didn't have more years to shuffle their other options off to. The best Maya could do was to suggest they do week-long studies on the others. This worked for them, and it helped to narrow things down until they were down to the last two. They were not going to get any closer, so they eventually left it to the flip of a coin. Maya had done the toss, with witnesses around her, and impressionism had won out.
Her last group, the juniors, were maybe the hardest to get to focus, but then she'd known that would be the case. It was Halloween, and her class was the only thing that stood between them and whatever plans they had for the evening. If she was going to get them all to make a choice, she figured, she needed to look at what options were there for her. She'd taught most of those kids for two years already, so she knew them, and she also knew what could work with the last period juniors. From that, she'd slowly but surely gotten them to go with paint, so that was a start. Unlike their AP classmates, they weren't looking to do portraits again, so it came down to landscapes, and with this being accepted by the vast majority, they soon were freed to run off and enjoy their spooky night, while she went off to see about her own little monster, and their leader, the birthday girl.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
