LJ Idol Season 7 Week 21 Home Game - Years I Spent Just Passing Through
o/` "I set out on a narrow way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you" o/`
-- "Bless the Broken Road" performed by Rascal Flatts
Our master bedroom suite adjoins both the living room and the kitchen through a wooden door, an open archway, and a small corridor less than two feet long. On nights like tonight, when Diagenou isn't feeling well and I'm expecting guests, it's a blessed convenience. I can sit comfortably beside him on our queen size bed and still have a clear view of the front door. If tea or broth need made, it's only a few steps into the kitchen. One of the family's best purchases is the little water cooler complete with a storage cupboard for medicinals, teas, and cups which also provides water sufficiently hot enough to make those beverages. He gets so restless if I leave his side that those few steps and the difference between spending twenty minutes at the stove waiting for water to boil or quickly getting what I want make all the difference. When Diagenou is ill, he stays in my bed. Dorie and Mr. Shapeshifter either share the couch or her bed in her own room. I'd have bet both of them were already asleep; Mr. Shapeshifter had to go in to an early meeting tomorrow and Dorie had spent most of the day tending her brother in order to allow me a chance to rest.
Around eleven or so an early spring thunderstorm rolled in, breaking over the house as though a giant's child had dropped a set of pick-up-sticks. The rain drummed on the roof and drove at the windows on a distinctive slant, details revealed between great peals of thunder which shook the knick-knacks on their shelves and white hot flashes of forked lightning. Diagenou first turned his head to the window, squinting out into the chaos, and then tried to bring himself up into a half sitting position. The cold compress had slipped off his forehead. He batted irritably at it until it fell on the floor and continued staring out the window. "I heard something."
I put a gentle hand on his shoulder and firmly pushed him back down onto the pillows. "Nothing out there, dearest, not on a night like this. It's just a storm."
"Ygraine ---"
"I left a storm lantern at the gate and another hanging at the walkway along with an umbrella. Go back to sleep, please." Except in the most dire of circumstances, Diagenou isn't allowed either painkillers or sleeping pills. I dropped a generous dose of hops and lavender into his tea. Most of the time that was enough and it would have to be this time; there was just no possible means I could get away with putting valerian in it without him noticing. The stuff smelled vile, like three day old gym socks soaked in swamp water. "Drink that and then back to sleep with you."
He curled his hands around the mug, savoring the flavor, and raised a cinnamon colored eyebrow. "And if I don't?"
I...well...I... I'll" I leaned forward and pounced upon the long narrow foot protruding from the blankets "I'll tickle you!"
The front door banged open, startling us both, and then did a double tap as it slammed shut. A smoky contralto, thickly laced with a Bayou Country accent, inquired dryly, "Am I interrupting something, children?"
Uttering a decidedly unmanly shriek, Diagenou bolted upright, jostling the night stand and nearly upsetting both the lamp and his tea. As he'd unfortunately also been in the act of drinking, a goodly portion of it seemed to have disappeared into his lungs instead of his mouth. "Ack! Erk! Good God, woman, you shouldn't sneak up on folk like that!" Diagenou sputtered, flailing at the blankets in a belated attempt to preserve his modesty. His own accent, something he'd worked hard to control and minimize, sounded just as thick as our guest's.
Since I'd had hold of his ankle, he'd kicked me smartly in the face when he'd begun flailing around. I wiped a thin trickle of blood from my nose with my nightgown sleeve and tried to repair the damage to our collective reputations. "I was," I said with as much dignity as I could muster and then spoiled it with a sniff to keep the blood from dripping down my front, "threatening to tickle him. He was being difficult."
"Was not," Diagenou muttered from deep beneath the quilt. Only the crown of his head and the bright green of his eyes were visible and he was blushing.
"Hush up, lad," Ygraine scolded him, "and stop acting like a doodlebug in its den." She laughed again as she began unwinding the shawl from her head and shoulders. "I've seen it all from you and then some, monsieur! Oops, give me a hand there, child. I don't want to disturb the babes."
I'd known Diagenou had a relationship with Ygraine, my mentor in all things spiritual and herbal. Before I'd found Diagenou again, I'd known her only as Coyote Woman. A lot of things had changed in that year and a half, including the birth of Diagenou's boy and girl. They were twins, though you wouldn't have known it from the photos he proudly displayed. Roslyn, with her fine strawberry blond curls and hazel eyes, more closely resembled Ygraine while there could be no doubt about who had fathered Vandy (whose full name I never could properly remember). The baby boy had a mop of bright copper hair, relentlessly straight, and the same penetrating green eyes --- a fey and foxy little thing who watched the world with an intensity at odds with his young age. This was the first time I'd met Diagenou's children personally. Both parents watched carefully, knowing they were playing an uncertain set of odds by bringing the babies here.
I don't like children except in a very general sense. I admire quiet, well behaved babies and toddlers. I appreciate clever readers and thinkers. Heck, I can even spend a day with someone else's children and thoroughly enjoy myself as long as I'm able to give them back to their parents at the end of the day.
Quite obviously I wouldn't be able to give either Vandy or Roslyn back just like that. Cajuns, I have discovered, have a deeply entrenched sense of kinship and family. I would be expected to be a part of that family and to help with the raising of these children. Not only were they family, they were Diagenou's which would have made them precious to me for no other reason. That their mother was one of my oldest friends and my most beloved mentor made it doubly so. In short order, I found myself nestled back in my chair comfortably rocking the little boy while Ygraine pulled the rocking chair close and discreetly nursed the little girl. I'd expected to feel awkward --- ashamed, embarrassed (for children were the one thing I could not give him, any more than I could give them to Mr. Shapeshifter), angry, or disgusted --- but I did not expect it to feel comfortable nor did I expect to be suffused with love. This little boy, like his daddy, didn't want anything from me which I wasn't ready to give. "How did this happen?" I wondered aloud as Ygraine handed me a bottle for him. Vandy reached a tiny hand out of the blankets to clasp the side of the bottle. The other hand wound itself around one of my fingers.
"It's simple," Diagenou responded, all innocence. "One night, I had an incredible hard-on and Ygraine was horny. We forgot the condom and fucked."
"Close your mouth, Kitty, or a fly will buzz on in and set up housekeeping," Ygraine said mildly as she adjusted Roslyn's position. The baby's mouth came up with a moist sucking noise. She blue a few wet bubbles, burbled in protest, and the quieted when Ygraine shifted her to the other breast. "As I recall" she laughed and the faintest hint of a blush colored her cheeks "his...er...attributes ripped the condom and I wanted him so badly I told him to forget about the damned thing. What are the odds?"
"Double, apparently," I quipped, smiling. "That's not what I meant. I just feel...lucky, incredibly butt-ass lucky to have found both of you and Dorie and Mr. Shapeshifter. You Cajuns take family for granted because you always seem to have someone somewhere who is related, however distantly. I don't have much blood family left." I cast a fond glance down the hall toward where my other beloveds slept and smiled beatifically around the room. "But I do have you guys now as well."
Diagenou reached for my hand. Vandy, objecting, clamped his toothless gums down on his daddy's pinky finger. Diagenou just let the boy gnaw on it as he said, "They were long odds, all right, but we beat them. How long has it been?"
"Almost twenty-eight years," I answered. "I have loved you since that awful first day at the Department of Defense boarding school when I saw you from my dormitory window walking across the town square. I loved you when we met again years later at that stupid Air Force Academy Band Days weekend."
"You had a strange way of showing love, then," he said and settled back against the pillows pretending to pout.
"I haven't heard this one," said Ygraine. "Do tell."
"There's not much to tell," I said, chagrined. "I was maybe fifteen and somewhat silly."
"'Somewhat silly'?" Diagenou roared indignantly. "She got a couple of her girlfriends together and they kidnapped me."
Ygraine blinked. "Kidnapped him? Good heavens, child, that is not how you get the attention of a beau!"
"It wasn't a big deal," I insisted. "We made sure the duct tape only stuck to the cloth of his uniform. It's not like he was hurt!"
"They shoved me into the cargo hold under the school bus. I missed supper!"
"Poor boy, missing a single meal," said Ygraine without much sympathy.
"I got marked AWOL too. Almost cost me my career."
"That's true," I said, shamefaced. "It took a call from my Ma to straighten things out. I think they only let it pass because of who my Pa was..."
"It sure doesn't say much for their Academy if a couple of overweight high school band girls can overpower one of their cadets," Diagenou agreed, "but it meant I got your phone number and we talked every weekend for a while."
"Until I got married in 1993," I said. I didn't want to talk about that any more, not when the evening had been so companionable. The shadows cast by my abusive ex-husband didn't belong here in this time and place. "But we're together now, all of us."
"And that's enough," agreed Ygraine, stifling a yawn. "Would you two mind..."
"No," I said, getting up carefully so I wouldn't wake Vandy. "The bed is plenty big enough for all of us."
I beat the odds, I thought as I drifted off to sleep sandwiched between the man who held my soul and the woman who had helped shape it. Long shot, but it's definitely worth having played the game.
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you" o/`
-- "Bless the Broken Road" performed by Rascal Flatts
Our master bedroom suite adjoins both the living room and the kitchen through a wooden door, an open archway, and a small corridor less than two feet long. On nights like tonight, when Diagenou isn't feeling well and I'm expecting guests, it's a blessed convenience. I can sit comfortably beside him on our queen size bed and still have a clear view of the front door. If tea or broth need made, it's only a few steps into the kitchen. One of the family's best purchases is the little water cooler complete with a storage cupboard for medicinals, teas, and cups which also provides water sufficiently hot enough to make those beverages. He gets so restless if I leave his side that those few steps and the difference between spending twenty minutes at the stove waiting for water to boil or quickly getting what I want make all the difference. When Diagenou is ill, he stays in my bed. Dorie and Mr. Shapeshifter either share the couch or her bed in her own room. I'd have bet both of them were already asleep; Mr. Shapeshifter had to go in to an early meeting tomorrow and Dorie had spent most of the day tending her brother in order to allow me a chance to rest.
Around eleven or so an early spring thunderstorm rolled in, breaking over the house as though a giant's child had dropped a set of pick-up-sticks. The rain drummed on the roof and drove at the windows on a distinctive slant, details revealed between great peals of thunder which shook the knick-knacks on their shelves and white hot flashes of forked lightning. Diagenou first turned his head to the window, squinting out into the chaos, and then tried to bring himself up into a half sitting position. The cold compress had slipped off his forehead. He batted irritably at it until it fell on the floor and continued staring out the window. "I heard something."
I put a gentle hand on his shoulder and firmly pushed him back down onto the pillows. "Nothing out there, dearest, not on a night like this. It's just a storm."
"Ygraine ---"
"I left a storm lantern at the gate and another hanging at the walkway along with an umbrella. Go back to sleep, please." Except in the most dire of circumstances, Diagenou isn't allowed either painkillers or sleeping pills. I dropped a generous dose of hops and lavender into his tea. Most of the time that was enough and it would have to be this time; there was just no possible means I could get away with putting valerian in it without him noticing. The stuff smelled vile, like three day old gym socks soaked in swamp water. "Drink that and then back to sleep with you."
He curled his hands around the mug, savoring the flavor, and raised a cinnamon colored eyebrow. "And if I don't?"
I...well...I... I'll" I leaned forward and pounced upon the long narrow foot protruding from the blankets "I'll tickle you!"
The front door banged open, startling us both, and then did a double tap as it slammed shut. A smoky contralto, thickly laced with a Bayou Country accent, inquired dryly, "Am I interrupting something, children?"
Uttering a decidedly unmanly shriek, Diagenou bolted upright, jostling the night stand and nearly upsetting both the lamp and his tea. As he'd unfortunately also been in the act of drinking, a goodly portion of it seemed to have disappeared into his lungs instead of his mouth. "Ack! Erk! Good God, woman, you shouldn't sneak up on folk like that!" Diagenou sputtered, flailing at the blankets in a belated attempt to preserve his modesty. His own accent, something he'd worked hard to control and minimize, sounded just as thick as our guest's.
Since I'd had hold of his ankle, he'd kicked me smartly in the face when he'd begun flailing around. I wiped a thin trickle of blood from my nose with my nightgown sleeve and tried to repair the damage to our collective reputations. "I was," I said with as much dignity as I could muster and then spoiled it with a sniff to keep the blood from dripping down my front, "threatening to tickle him. He was being difficult."
"Was not," Diagenou muttered from deep beneath the quilt. Only the crown of his head and the bright green of his eyes were visible and he was blushing.
"Hush up, lad," Ygraine scolded him, "and stop acting like a doodlebug in its den." She laughed again as she began unwinding the shawl from her head and shoulders. "I've seen it all from you and then some, monsieur! Oops, give me a hand there, child. I don't want to disturb the babes."
I'd known Diagenou had a relationship with Ygraine, my mentor in all things spiritual and herbal. Before I'd found Diagenou again, I'd known her only as Coyote Woman. A lot of things had changed in that year and a half, including the birth of Diagenou's boy and girl. They were twins, though you wouldn't have known it from the photos he proudly displayed. Roslyn, with her fine strawberry blond curls and hazel eyes, more closely resembled Ygraine while there could be no doubt about who had fathered Vandy (whose full name I never could properly remember). The baby boy had a mop of bright copper hair, relentlessly straight, and the same penetrating green eyes --- a fey and foxy little thing who watched the world with an intensity at odds with his young age. This was the first time I'd met Diagenou's children personally. Both parents watched carefully, knowing they were playing an uncertain set of odds by bringing the babies here.
I don't like children except in a very general sense. I admire quiet, well behaved babies and toddlers. I appreciate clever readers and thinkers. Heck, I can even spend a day with someone else's children and thoroughly enjoy myself as long as I'm able to give them back to their parents at the end of the day.
Quite obviously I wouldn't be able to give either Vandy or Roslyn back just like that. Cajuns, I have discovered, have a deeply entrenched sense of kinship and family. I would be expected to be a part of that family and to help with the raising of these children. Not only were they family, they were Diagenou's which would have made them precious to me for no other reason. That their mother was one of my oldest friends and my most beloved mentor made it doubly so. In short order, I found myself nestled back in my chair comfortably rocking the little boy while Ygraine pulled the rocking chair close and discreetly nursed the little girl. I'd expected to feel awkward --- ashamed, embarrassed (for children were the one thing I could not give him, any more than I could give them to Mr. Shapeshifter), angry, or disgusted --- but I did not expect it to feel comfortable nor did I expect to be suffused with love. This little boy, like his daddy, didn't want anything from me which I wasn't ready to give. "How did this happen?" I wondered aloud as Ygraine handed me a bottle for him. Vandy reached a tiny hand out of the blankets to clasp the side of the bottle. The other hand wound itself around one of my fingers.
"It's simple," Diagenou responded, all innocence. "One night, I had an incredible hard-on and Ygraine was horny. We forgot the condom and fucked."
"Close your mouth, Kitty, or a fly will buzz on in and set up housekeeping," Ygraine said mildly as she adjusted Roslyn's position. The baby's mouth came up with a moist sucking noise. She blue a few wet bubbles, burbled in protest, and the quieted when Ygraine shifted her to the other breast. "As I recall" she laughed and the faintest hint of a blush colored her cheeks "his...er...attributes ripped the condom and I wanted him so badly I told him to forget about the damned thing. What are the odds?"
"Double, apparently," I quipped, smiling. "That's not what I meant. I just feel...lucky, incredibly butt-ass lucky to have found both of you and Dorie and Mr. Shapeshifter. You Cajuns take family for granted because you always seem to have someone somewhere who is related, however distantly. I don't have much blood family left." I cast a fond glance down the hall toward where my other beloveds slept and smiled beatifically around the room. "But I do have you guys now as well."
Diagenou reached for my hand. Vandy, objecting, clamped his toothless gums down on his daddy's pinky finger. Diagenou just let the boy gnaw on it as he said, "They were long odds, all right, but we beat them. How long has it been?"
"Almost twenty-eight years," I answered. "I have loved you since that awful first day at the Department of Defense boarding school when I saw you from my dormitory window walking across the town square. I loved you when we met again years later at that stupid Air Force Academy Band Days weekend."
"You had a strange way of showing love, then," he said and settled back against the pillows pretending to pout.
"I haven't heard this one," said Ygraine. "Do tell."
"There's not much to tell," I said, chagrined. "I was maybe fifteen and somewhat silly."
"'Somewhat silly'?" Diagenou roared indignantly. "She got a couple of her girlfriends together and they kidnapped me."
Ygraine blinked. "Kidnapped him? Good heavens, child, that is not how you get the attention of a beau!"
"It wasn't a big deal," I insisted. "We made sure the duct tape only stuck to the cloth of his uniform. It's not like he was hurt!"
"They shoved me into the cargo hold under the school bus. I missed supper!"
"Poor boy, missing a single meal," said Ygraine without much sympathy.
"I got marked AWOL too. Almost cost me my career."
"That's true," I said, shamefaced. "It took a call from my Ma to straighten things out. I think they only let it pass because of who my Pa was..."
"It sure doesn't say much for their Academy if a couple of overweight high school band girls can overpower one of their cadets," Diagenou agreed, "but it meant I got your phone number and we talked every weekend for a while."
"Until I got married in 1993," I said. I didn't want to talk about that any more, not when the evening had been so companionable. The shadows cast by my abusive ex-husband didn't belong here in this time and place. "But we're together now, all of us."
"And that's enough," agreed Ygraine, stifling a yawn. "Would you two mind..."
"No," I said, getting up carefully so I wouldn't wake Vandy. "The bed is plenty big enough for all of us."
I beat the odds, I thought as I drifted off to sleep sandwiched between the man who held my soul and the woman who had helped shape it. Long shot, but it's definitely worth having played the game.