Five Turning Points in Wendy Mitchell's Life (Part 1 of 2)skieswideopenMarch 13 2012, 04:22:06 UTC
Thanks to colls for brainstorming with me! Note: this fic contains references to sensitive issues, including abortion and 1960s attitudes toward single parenthood.
1. Wendy moves to San Francisco right after high school. She gets a job as a waitress to keep a roof over her head, and takes the odd course at SFSU to keep her parents happy, but mostly she just drinks in the atmosphere: music and pot and demonstrations and long nights spent talking about they're going to change the world. She never goes quite as far as full communal living--although the house she was living in didn't seem all that different at times, with all the shifting roommates--but in ever other way she embraces the Summer of Love. Completely.
2. She's careful, both by nature and because there are some conversations she doesn't want to have with her parents. A few months after she arrives in San Francisco, Wendy borrows a fake wedding ring from a friend and goes to see a sympathetic doctor to get a prescription for the Pill. She thinks that should be enough, but then one month she's late. Just a few days, as it turns out, but she spends those days picturing the her father's disappointed expression when he finds out.
A friend tells her where she can get it taken care of, and while she doesn't end up needing that particular service, the experience leaves her with definite opinions on the matter. It also leaves her thinking that maybe it's time to get serious about those college courses.
3. She meets Frank near the end of the Summer of Love, just around the time she starts thinking maybe she needs to come up with some sort of plan for her future. He's stationed at Travis then, visiting San Francisco first out of curiosity, and later just to see her.
They marry the month after she graduates, and suddenly she's in a whole new world. Wendy knew a couple of military families when she was a kid, was friends with their kids, and she thought she knew what she was getting into. As it turns out, she really doesn't. Because you just couldn't know what it was like to move every two or three years or watch your husband march off to Southeast Asia or run a household and raise your kids entirely on your own for months at a time until you actually did it. But she figures it out. Learns to pack and unpack fast and efficient, to make a home in a different town every few years, to corral two kids mostly on her own. She networks with other Air Force wives and reads a lot of books during evenings alone. She's happy.
Five Turning Points in Wendy Mitchell's Life (Part 2 of 2)skieswideopenMarch 13 2012, 04:22:57 UTC
4. It's not until she's happy, of course--not until she's figured things out and settled into the role and everything's going smoothly--that it all comes crashing down.
The Air Force sends someone to come get her. It's the middle of the day and she barely has time to ask a neighbour to watch the baby and keep an eye out for the boys when they come home from school and then she's off to the V.A. hospital where they keep her waiting for hours anyway.
At first all she's worried about is whether he's going to survive. But once they get past that, she's faced with a whole new set of challenges, because neither of them has ever really thought through what Frank would do if he couldn't fly anymore. Death...death they'd talked about. But they'd kept away from disability, from all the other horrible things that could happen to a pilot and military man as if talking about it might jinx them. They don't have to talk to know what's coming, however, and the medical discharge paperwork isn't a surprise to either of them. She leaves it by Frank's bedside, and then creeps away to cry.
Frank puts a brave face on it, talking about artificial legs and crutches, but he's her husband and Wendy knows him well enough to see through it to the pain beneath. And then there's Cam, trying hard to be brave as well, and Connor, too young to really understand what's going on except that his father's can't swing him through the air like a plane anymore, and the baby besides. Three kids and a husband and all of them having to build a new life without any warning at all.
She's determined the new life will be at least as good as the one they're leaving behind.
5. At nearly seventy, Wendy figures she's pretty much immune to surprise. She finds out just how wrong she is one bright spring morning, which she and the rest of the world spend sitting entranced in front of their televisions watching as the president (and assorted other world leaders) tell them what's really been going on for the past decade-plus. Her grandchildren are going to grow up in a different world, she thinks, and then the camera cuts to Cam and a couple of other Air Force officers--familiar faces, both of them--and she nearly drops her coffee in shock.
The cameras descend on them a few weeks later, when the journalists start to run out of official material and go looking for background on the public faces of the Stargate Program. She and Frank have become something of local celebrities in the meantime--every one of their neighbours seems to want their advice or opinion on something or another--so it's not hard for the news crews to find them. Staring down at her answering machine full of media messages and interview requests, Wendy realizes that her life isn't ever going to quite be the same again.
This was just absolutely wonderful. I love that you did it with a tertiary character, and really gave the pieces a chance to grow by using two posts. You also did a neat thing with the Summer of Love and Pill parts, aging the piece into a time frame that fit for Wendy. I liked that you really chose turning points in Wendy's life. Literal moments of change. Well done!
Re: Five Turning Points in Wendy Mitchell's Life (Part 2 of 2)sidljMarch 23 2012, 03:25:07 UTC
Whoa, very groovy! *g*
The last line is so great, because we can all see that Wendy not only adjusts to change very well, and sometimes even seeks it out, but will wrestle change into submission if it messes with her family! I'm admiring her a lot right now.
1. Wendy moves to San Francisco right after high school. She gets a job as a waitress to keep a roof over her head, and takes the odd course at SFSU to keep her parents happy, but mostly she just drinks in the atmosphere: music and pot and demonstrations and long nights spent talking about they're going to change the world. She never goes quite as far as full communal living--although the house she was living in didn't seem all that different at times, with all the shifting roommates--but in ever other way she embraces the Summer of Love. Completely.
2. She's careful, both by nature and because there are some conversations she doesn't want to have with her parents. A few months after she arrives in San Francisco, Wendy borrows a fake wedding ring from a friend and goes to see a sympathetic doctor to get a prescription for the Pill. She thinks that should be enough, but then one month she's late. Just a few days, as it turns out, but she spends those days picturing the her father's disappointed expression when he finds out.
A friend tells her where she can get it taken care of, and while she doesn't end up needing that particular service, the experience leaves her with definite opinions on the matter. It also leaves her thinking that maybe it's time to get serious about those college courses.
3. She meets Frank near the end of the Summer of Love, just around the time she starts thinking maybe she needs to come up with some sort of plan for her future. He's stationed at Travis then, visiting San Francisco first out of curiosity, and later just to see her.
They marry the month after she graduates, and suddenly she's in a whole new world. Wendy knew a couple of military families when she was a kid, was friends with their kids, and she thought she knew what she was getting into. As it turns out, she really doesn't. Because you just couldn't know what it was like to move every two or three years or watch your husband march off to Southeast Asia or run a household and raise your kids entirely on your own for months at a time until you actually did it. But she figures it out. Learns to pack and unpack fast and efficient, to make a home in a different town every few years, to corral two kids mostly on her own. She networks with other Air Force wives and reads a lot of books during evenings alone. She's happy.
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The Air Force sends someone to come get her. It's the middle of the day and she barely has time to ask a neighbour to watch the baby and keep an eye out for the boys when they come home from school and then she's off to the V.A. hospital where they keep her waiting for hours anyway.
At first all she's worried about is whether he's going to survive. But once they get past that, she's faced with a whole new set of challenges, because neither of them has ever really thought through what Frank would do if he couldn't fly anymore. Death...death they'd talked about. But they'd kept away from disability, from all the other horrible things that could happen to a pilot and military man as if talking about it might jinx them. They don't have to talk to know what's coming, however, and the medical discharge paperwork isn't a surprise to either of them. She leaves it by Frank's bedside, and then creeps away to cry.
Frank puts a brave face on it, talking about artificial legs and crutches, but he's her husband and Wendy knows him well enough to see through it to the pain beneath. And then there's Cam, trying hard to be brave as well, and Connor, too young to really understand what's going on except that his father's can't swing him through the air like a plane anymore, and the baby besides. Three kids and a husband and all of them having to build a new life without any warning at all.
She's determined the new life will be at least as good as the one they're leaving behind.
5. At nearly seventy, Wendy figures she's pretty much immune to surprise. She finds out just how wrong she is one bright spring morning, which she and the rest of the world spend sitting entranced in front of their televisions watching as the president (and assorted other world leaders) tell them what's really been going on for the past decade-plus. Her grandchildren are going to grow up in a different world, she thinks, and then the camera cuts to Cam and a couple of other Air Force officers--familiar faces, both of them--and she nearly drops her coffee in shock.
The cameras descend on them a few weeks later, when the journalists start to run out of official material and go looking for background on the public faces of the Stargate Program. She and Frank have become something of local celebrities in the meantime--every one of their neighbours seems to want their advice or opinion on something or another--so it's not hard for the news crews to find them. Staring down at her answering machine full of media messages and interview requests, Wendy realizes that her life isn't ever going to quite be the same again.
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I had fun coming up with historical events for Wendy to have participated in, so I'm glad you enjoyed that!
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Great job!
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The last line is so great, because we can all see that Wendy not only adjusts to change very well, and sometimes even seeks it out, but will wrestle change into submission if it messes with her family! I'm admiring her a lot right now.
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Wendy will find a way to get things into shape. Definitely.
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