Response to challenge: traditions
Set S4 with minor spoilers. Michael Vaughn and birthday traditions.
When Michael Vaughn was young, his birthday wishes consisted mostly of inane things: a pony, ice hockey world championships, a trip to the moon. His father would always ask what he'd wished for and, as appropriate, he would never answer. Despite this discretionary measure, the wishes very rarely came true.
After his father died, Michael refused to make birthday wishes. He was old enough to realize that his father will never come home and to wish for anything else seemed flippant, disrespectful even. Instead, he allowed his mother to organize birthday gatherings at which his father was conspicuous only through his absence, blew out candles with a smile both nostalgic and genuinely joyful, and tried to ignore the growing tangibility of the things left unsaid.
---
The first birthday he spends with Lauren, she wears a low-cut silk dress and tells him to make a wish. He considers explaining why he will not, until something in her eyes deters him and he blows out the candles abruptly.
"What did you wish for?" she asks with a smile.
"I wished that we'll find our dream home soon," he replies without missing a beat.
As predicted, she pounces on this. "Michael! If you tell me it's never going to come true."
Then why did you ask? is the question on the tip of his tongue, but he has learnt by now to allow Lauren her indulgences. In any case, wishing is a birthday tradition that has by now completely lost its meaning: the only thing he could picture himself truly wishing for at this juncture - what he feels guilty even thinking about - seems too ridiculous to even acknowledge as a fantasy, so it seems fitting that the wish he makes to replace it has had its illusion of sanctity equally ruined. Still, he smiles bashfully at his wife and offers gratefulness when all is apparently forgiven.
---
When his birthday comes around again and Sydney says 'make a wish' almost offhandedly, he chooses once again not to; after all, Sydney is standing in front of him, happy and alive, willing to hold his hand and snap his picture and not talk about his duplicitous ex-wife. It is more proof than he will ever need that if wishes were to come true, they would do so with or without birthdays.
Nevertheless, he blows all thirty-six candles out in one go as the applause of friends erupts around him; when the smoke clears, he wants Sydney's smile to be the first thing he sees.
When Michael Vaughn was young, his birthday wishes consisted mostly of inane things: a pony, ice hockey world championships, a trip to the moon. His father would always ask what he'd wished for and, as appropriate, he would never answer. Despite this discretionary measure, the wishes very rarely came true.
After his father died, Michael refused to make birthday wishes. He was old enough to realize that his father will never come home and to wish for anything else seemed flippant, disrespectful even. Instead, he allowed his mother to organize birthday gatherings at which his father was conspicuous only through his absence, blew out candles with a smile both nostalgic and genuinely joyful, and tried to ignore the growing tangibility of the things left unsaid.
---
The first birthday he spends with Lauren, she wears a low-cut silk dress and tells him to make a wish. He considers explaining why he will not, until something in her eyes deters him and he blows out the candles abruptly.
"What did you wish for?" she asks with a smile.
"I wished that we'll find our dream home soon," he replies without missing a beat.
As predicted, she pounces on this. "Michael! If you tell me it's never going to come true."
Then why did you ask? is the question on the tip of his tongue, but he has learnt by now to allow Lauren her indulgences. In any case, wishing is a birthday tradition that has by now completely lost its meaning: the only thing he could picture himself truly wishing for at this juncture - what he feels guilty even thinking about - seems too ridiculous to even acknowledge as a fantasy, so it seems fitting that the wish he makes to replace it has had its illusion of sanctity equally ruined. Still, he smiles bashfully at his wife and offers gratefulness when all is apparently forgiven.
---
When his birthday comes around again and Sydney says 'make a wish' almost offhandedly, he chooses once again not to; after all, Sydney is standing in front of him, happy and alive, willing to hold his hand and snap his picture and not talk about his duplicitous ex-wife. It is more proof than he will ever need that if wishes were to come true, they would do so with or without birthdays.
Nevertheless, he blows all thirty-six candles out in one go as the applause of friends erupts around him; when the smoke clears, he wants Sydney's smile to be the first thing he sees.