What Were They Thinking?
Part IV: Maria Davis’s Story
“It seems that everyone who has touched this place has been blessed,” I said softly.
“We’re so glad you’ve finally moved down here to be with us,” Anna said. “It took you so long. Our namesake is twelve years old already. She needs to be near her grandma.”
“Anna Marie is the reason we’re here. We just had loose ends to tie up before we could move down here. You know how it goes when you have other children clamoring for attention.”
“Oh, don’t I just,” Marilyn laughed. “I thought Betts would kill her brother before I could get her out of the house.”
“Our problem is that I never really succeeded in getting Roxie out of the house. I’m still… worried about her,” I confessed.
25 Sibling Rivalry
“IT’S NOT FAIR! Why do you have to move all the way to Bloomington? What’s Dad even going to do? Become a farmer, like his son? Why does Rose get all the attention all the time?”
“Roxie, that’s enough! For Pete’s sake! We have a life, too. I have a twelve-year-old granddaughter down there and I have every right to live nearer so I can enjoy her growing up.”
“You have three grandkids up here!”
“And we have stayed right here until they were all over eighteen. They don’t need us taking care of them now. And neither do you. Step up to the plate and be there for your own kids!”
“Where? Where are we going to live? You’re selling this place. It’s the only home I’ve ever known.”
“You’ve been married three times and have a child from each husband. This is not the only home you’ve known,” I sighed. What a difference between my two daughters. One, an example of bad decision after bad decision. I’d finally told her she didn’t have to marry every man she slept with. The other daughter, president of a nationally recognized media conglomerate, mother of a delightful daughter, and part of a fifteen-member harem. Well, two out of three…
I’d certainly never anticipated my younger daughter’s chosen lifestyle. Nor that of my son. When Rose went to junior high school, I thought she’d probably follow in her sister’s footsteps. Both girls were overly endowed. I blame the hormones in chicken breasts. I assumed I’d be struggling to keep her home before she reached eighth grade.
But she fell in with a crowd that took life seriously. Not that there was never any questionable activity, but by ninth grade they had solidified into a unit. They even created an agreement to govern their dating. I was impressed. It was the first sign I’d seen that the second child had more sense than the first.
“Brian Frost?” Rex had said. “Is that Hayden and Marilyn’s son? Hard workers. Good honest people from what I can tell. I’ve only had one occasion to work with them, but I was impressed. They were among the first clients I had when I was just getting started in real estate law. Rose is involved with their son?”
“Well, not just with Brian. They’ve created a group. Look at this agreement.” I handed him the copy Marilyn had given me. “You know the Frosts organized the Labor Day swim at Crystal Lake the past couple of years. Marilyn and I had a long chat about kids growing up when we were there. I certainly never expected this, though. She’s organizing a calling tree so the kids all have a safety net.”
“Now that’s a good idea,” my husband said. “I don’t see any problems with this, as far as it goes. For heaven’s sake, Maria, after Roxie, I never expected Rose to last this long as a virgin. She signed this? I think we should do everything we can to encourage it.”
And so we did. We offered to drive when kids wanted to go out together. We put our phone number on the call list. Rex even advised them legally on occasion. By that time Roxie had gone off across the country to Carnegie Mellon to study art. I wasn’t confident in her artistic ability based on the drawings I’d seen, but the school either saw her talent or our checkbook. I suspected she thought it would be the easiest subject she could study while she partied.
The complaints started almost immediately. “You never let me…” The truth was, we never had a chance to give her permission. She was a sneak. By comparison, giving Rose permission to attend an all-night mixed party chaperoned by the Frosts was an easy decision.
About that time, Ross got involved with a group, as well. He’d met a boy in junior high. And a girl. I admit that I gave very little consideration to what my apparently stable middle child was up to while I attempted to understand my son and deal with the issues of my oldest daughter.
“Ross, have you and your friends considered entering an agreement like Rose’s group did?” I asked after a party for a dozen kids in the late spring. We’d taken the group out on the pontoon boat to celebrate the end of the school year. Rose, of course, was at a party at a cheerleader’s home. Everything I saw while we were on the boat and while the kids were eating and playing games was just what you’d expect from a bunch of newly-minted teenagers. I thought, in fact, that they were extremely well-behaved. Then, as parents came to pick up their children after the party, I happened to glance down the hall and saw Ross give another boy a kiss. It wasn’t deep and passionate, but you just didn’t see boys kiss each other in our day and age. I felt I needed to talk to him.
“Oh. Yeah. We’ve got one,” he said. “Rose and Samantha got us together back in January—remember when we all went to the JV basketball game? Well, right after the game, they gave us a copy of their agreement. It had a lot of blanks on it and they said that if we were going to pal around like they did that we needed to decide what was acceptable behavior. Most of what was on the list, we just said ‘yuck, no’ to and scratched, but they said we could always revise it as we got older as long as we remembered it only set the limits of what we could do and not a list of requirements we had to do. We’re cool.”
“And does it apply equally to… um… behavior… between boys as well as between boys and girls?” There I’d said it. I opened the door to accepting his possible homosexual relationship with the other boy. “You know, it’s okay if you are… uh…”
“Relax, Mom. Remember that book I read last fall? Silverback? Science fiction where humans encounter an alien race and start a big civil war among the natives who want to accept the humans and those who want to reject them. Pretty cool stuff.”
“What does this have to do with…?”
“I’m getting there. Science fiction explores concepts of social interaction that are considered deviant in our society by setting them in alien societies. In this one, the young actually choose their gender at puberty. So, childhood and pre-puberty are kept completely non-sexual as the Silverbacks explore what it means to become male or female and then make the choice. I suspect there were other choices besides male and female, too. Well, right now, I’m like one of those Silverbacks. I know I can’t just choose to be a girl instead of a boy… At least not without a bunch of chemicals and surgery. But I’m exploring what I am in relationship to gender. Either way, Mom, the agreement still holds.”
“Ross, where are you getting all this from? This is not the thinking of a thirteen-year-old boy.”
“I read a lot. I think a lot. In fact, I think one day I want to become a philosopher. You wouldn’t mind if I grew a bushy beard and smoked a pipe, would you?”
“Just… uh… not in the house.”
“I’m such a failure!” Roxie moaned. “I don’t deserve to live. I should just kill myself.”
“Roxanne! You’re fifty years old. It’s simply time to grow up!” I was near the edge of my wits in dealing with my eldest. The ‘For Sale’ sign had gone up in our yard a month ago and as far as I knew, she’d yet to decide on a place to live. Our new retirement home in Corazón was slated to be completed in two weeks. Sold or not sold, this house was going to be empty. “You’ve had the longest time as a teenager known to mankind. This house is going to be sold. It’s too much for your father and me to keep up and you are no help. Pack your room. You’ve looked at three apartments that are all within your budget. Choose one and move out!”
“Richard asked me to move in with him,” she sighed.
“He asked you or you convinced him?”
“Yeah. He’s not a bad guy. Maybe he’s not rich but he’s not mean either. I think I could be happy there. I wish he lived on the river.”
“Instead of focusing on your happiness, why don’t you focus on making him happy. Pull your weight. Show him you care about him.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Daughter, learn the age-old art of being a woman. Fake it.”
When Rex and Jean Duval drew up the legal documents to incorporate the Clan and Casa del Fuego, I saw my middle child’s world open up. Oh, by that time, I knew she and Brian were sexually active. Perhaps with others in the group as well. But she’d also taken on both a business and spiritual leadership role. Her young—what did they call it? Hearthmate—had taken on the responsibility of becoming a television producer when they moved to Bloomington, but I could see Rose’s fingerprints all over the formation of the business. Not necessarily in the legal work, but in her philosophy of fair treatment for all her hearthmates and, indeed, for all her clan. They had even adopted Ross and his group into the larger clan and provided big brothers and sisters for them.
I noticed Hannah occasionally glancing over at Rose during her presentation to get little nods of approval and encouragement. I know Rex had hopes that she would follow in his footsteps and go into law, but I could see business leadership written all over her face that night. I gladly agreed with Rex that we should put five thousand dollars into their enterprise.
“Mommy,” my eldest daughter sighed as she sat on the bed that was no longer her son’s and held a high school award, “do you remember when Sim was born?”
“Of course I do. You and Jonathon were living in Fort Wayne and I sat beside you through your entire labor.”
“I thought it would all be better then. I thought Jonathon would be my partner and we would have three children, just like you and Dad. I just wanted to be a good mommy like you. I didn’t know he’d already started his affair with Rachel. It turned out that she was his forever love and when he got custody of Sim after our divorce, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t considered a fit mother. I set out to prove him and the courts wrong. I found David and tied him down as quickly as I could. I was only twenty-five and I still looked pretty good. I got pregnant with Brendan as quickly as I could after we were married. I didn’t care that David drank too much. I didn’t care that he pushed me around and sometimes slapped me. I knew that I would be a good mother to our son and that would make all the difference. David would come around. But he didn’t.”
“Your father got a restraining order against him and we took you and little Brendan in here. You stayed here for a year after the divorce before you met Lyle.”
“I thought I got it right with Lyle. I was married for two years before I got pregnant. I needed to make sure he was a good husband and would make a good father. I could tell by the way he treated Brendan that he was good with kids. We were both happy when Reggie was born. Lyle just doted over both the boys. I thought we were so happy. We were married fifteen years when I was served with divorce papers. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. He didn’t even pack a suitcase. Just left. You took us in. And I still just wanted to be a good mommy like you were.”
“How could we leave you on the street?” I sighed. “We’d already bought the lot in Corazón and planned to move out that year. Having two boys to take care of changed things. At least your dad managed to get the house sold and money in a trust fund for the boys.”
“And you delayed your dreams to patch up mine. I wasn’t a very good mommy after all. And I’m not a very good daughter. I know that I’ve been difficult. I don’t know why things didn’t work out for me. Lucky you, you’ve got a daughter who is a big success and has a beautiful daughter of her own. You’ve got a son who got a PhD and then decided to become a gardener. And you’ve got me. At least my boys aren’t in jail. I hope they make something of their lives.”
“Roxie, your life is far from over,” I sighed. “I understand being tired and worn down. That’s part of life and living. We all go through it sometimes. But this is your opportunity to rise to your potential.”
“That’s what Richard told me. He’s fronting my exhibition. He said we were going to find out once and for all if my paintings are worth anything. I don’t have much confidence in them. I don’t have much confidence in anything. I’ll end up spending the next ten years working off my debt to him. You’ll come back for the showing, won’t you?”
“Of course we will. And you need to pick up your confidence a bit. You went to Carnegie Mellon as an artist. Your paintings are beautiful. Get out there and get them!”
“Thank you, Mommy. I guess I’m ready to go now. Tell everybody hi from me when you get down to Corazón.”
I am seventy-two years old. Rex is seventy-six. We purchased one of the lots in the new subdivision across the road from the ranch. Nikki Duval was the first to build there. There are strict covenants in place. Lots are a minimum of one acre, mostly wooded. Cottages must be between 800 and 1200 square feet plus optional finished basement. It is a carefully planned community by architect Rhiannon Swift and while it sounds as if the lots are huge and the houses small, she did such a good job of planning the streets and paths around the lots that we have literally miles of walking trails. And of the ten cottages that have been built out here, eight are occupied by parents of the original clan. The other two are single women in the clan, Nikki Duval and Renee Carver.
We considered getting Roxie a cottage out here and just giving her a place to paint. Sadly, we’ve found that everything we’ve given her is followed by a request for something more. Perhaps the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is tell my daughter she had to move out on her own. Only time will tell.
There are any number of activities in the village. I find myself drawn to the little bakery my son-in-law runs. I usually arrive about seven, sometimes with Rex in tow. There is always some yummy baked good that should be putting on pounds around our middles but the daily workouts in the community center keep us fit. Most importantly, though, is that our granddaughter Anna Marie is usually there helping Brian finish the day’s baking before she runs across the square to the Academy in the old barn. It has a high reputation in this part of the state. After all, it graduated all the children of the Clan of the Heart and has fifty students in kindergarten through twelfth grade.
“Mama Maria,” Brian said as I watched my granddaughter scamper across the square, “we are so glad you have joined us at Corazón. Anna Marie has blossomed since you moved here.”
“Well, thank God she hasn’t blossomed as fast as her mother and aunt did. It was such a burden to those girls.”
“We can’t do much about the speed we develop or how much. If we could, I’d be six feet tall. Do you and Papa Rex need anything in your new house?”
“No. Carl has been over every day since we moved to check different things and make sure everything is satisfactory. The village has certainly grown since the days of a barn and a bunkhouse, hasn’t it?”
“Yes. We try to keep our village atmosphere, though. Even with people who aren’t related moving into a couple of the big houses, we try to include them as a part of the family. I think we’ll actually do an adoption this summer.” He watched with me as Anna Marie disappeared into the barn school. “Mama, please make sure Roxie knows she is welcome to visit here. I understand she is doing a show in South Bend this spring. I’d be willing to help arrange a show in Bloomington or even Indianapolis.”
“You’re a good son-in-law, Brian. I’ll let her know. How are your other wives?”
We had a pleasant chat and he reminded me to join the elders for the Memorial Day walk in the River of Life.
If I were to choose a perfect retirement place, this would be it. I only wish we’d been able to follow through with our plans six years ago.
And while we enjoy our granddaughter, listen to the stories of Rose’s media empire, and even help Ross in the big garden, I’ll pause every day to pray for my other daughter. God, please let her take charge of her own life, keep her safe from harm, and lead her to her own happily ever after.
Amen.
End Part IV
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