Mary and Daphne #145

Someone bit me, and then Mary asked, “Are you alright?”

“Mhmm,” I said.

“No you’re not.” Which was awfully presumptuous of her to say.

“What makes you say that,” I asked Miss Mary Know-It-All

“Because usually when I sink my teeth into your butt, you make this shivery squirming motion and let out happy little sighs and giggles.” She laid down next to me, equally naked on the blanket in from of the fireplace. If someone were to ask us how exactly we ended up there after dinner, or even which one of us took off our clothes first, I don’t think we could say. At least I couldn’t.

“You were staring into space all through dinner,” Mary reminded me, “and you weren’t even paying attention when I started getting you undressed.”

“So that’s how this happened. Huh.”

“Daphne, seriously, look at me. Lemme see your eyes.” I turned and she looked into my eyes and felt my forehead and my cheeks. “Are you feeling okay? Are you coming down with something?”

“No.”

“I’m getting the thermometer.”

“Mary, stop. It’s not that.” Smack! O my gawd she just spanked me! “What was that for!?!”

“I just asked you if you were alright and you said yes, and now you’re saying it is something after all. You tell me when you don’t feel good, understand me little girl?”

Gulp. She’s so sexy when she’s all take charge and and being concerned about me. “Yes’m.”

“Good. Hold still,” she said and wrapped a blanket around us and pulled me in close for some of that good skin-to-Mary contact time. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been thinking about Christmas. Kinda nervous about going home.”

“Why are you nervous?”

“I just …” Truth or joke? “I’m nervous about telling my parents I’m gay.” Joke. What with me having come out to them at seventeen and them being at (and paying for half of) our wedding and stuff.

Mary lifted her head off me and gave me an appraising look. “If you’ve been making me worry about you all day just so you could tell that joke, I’m getting the bathbrush off the wall.”

Yikes! She’s serious. Like, for serious? And yeah, for serious … seriously. She doesn’t muck about when it comes to how I’m feeling.

“No,” I said shook my head for emphasis.

“Then tell me what’s wrong,” she said as she laid her head back down on my shoulder.

“I’m nervous about seeing my family.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“Cuz I haven’t seen them in so long.”

“They’re still your family. You’ve talked to them. You’ve zoomed with them a couple times a week.”

“I know … It’s just different.”

Mary started doing that thing where she places tiny kisses on my shoulder and neck and hair. “They’re still your family. I don’t know them as well as you, but I don’t think you ever have a reason to be nervous to see them.”

“What if they got old?”

“We’ve seen them on Zoom.”

“Yeah, but … What if they got old? I’ve never been away from them for this long … I’m not ready for my mom and dad to be old.”

“I don’t think they did, but Daffy, look at me: whatever happens, everything will be alright. You’ll be so glad to see them and hug them that nothing else will matter. And years from now, when they do get old, I’ll be there and we’ll deal with it together, you and me. Like always.”

I wasn’t crying. You were crying. So nyah! Hmmph!

“It’s going to be our last Christmas in that house too.” They’re moving. “I grew up in that house.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“That’s home. That’s where I grew up. Mom still takes a pencil every year and traces the lines she made on the wall to measure our height growing up. Our treehouse … Mervin is buried there.” Dog, BTW. “All my Christmases were there until … until I moved in with you.” Mary just kept her head on my shoulder. “But I like … Mom and Dad and Greg … I like knowing they’re around the tree just like we always were … If that’s not …”

Okay, so I may have sobbed a time or two or three, so there.

“Shhh. You’re okay, Daffy. Deep breath; do it with me.”

“If that’s not our home then it really is over.”

“What is?”

“Being a kid … The way … It’s not the same.”

“What’s not the same?”

“When you’re all adults, you’re not a family in the same way. I just … Even when, after, when I stopped going home for Christmas, I could … pretend. I could at least pretend we were always the way we were.”

Okay, I’m just gonna cry now. Good thing I got this Mary person to hold me while I do that, even rock me a little. Coo at me and whisper little shushes in my ear and pat my back and tell me to let it all out. OMG I like her so much and stuff.

I know it’s all just what happens. You grow up; you move out; your parents get older; eventually they probably move out of the how you grew up in. I know nothing had ever really stayed the same, and even back then it didn’t stay the same, that we were all growing all the time and it wasn’t perfect and that I had been remembering it as idyllic when nothing is idyllic. I know that I was just pretending when I thought of my parents and my brother back there at home celebrating Christmas in our house as if the only thing that changed was that I moved away.

But also, I know that families really are different when they grow up. Relationships change; they stay the same, too, in some ways, but they also change. I liked being a kid. I liked my childhood. I liked being my brother’s little sister and Mom’s daughter and Daddy’s little girl. I still am, but not in the same way. I don’t get to pick on my brother and fight with Mom about what I’m wearing to Aunt Christine’s and sit on Daddy’s knee while he reads The Night Before Christmas.

That home isn’t just a house. It’s the setting for all that. It’s not like driving by my old school. It was my home and where I had a very happy childhood, and every time I’ve ever gone home, I stepped back into that place. It wasn’t stepping back in time, but I could pretend it was. I was so happy there, and then I moved away and it was so hard, and I wasn’t that happy again until I found Mary. But in those almost ten years in between, I could always go home.

So our last Christmas there, and the next time I go home for Christmas, it will be to a house I never lived in that my parents bought so they’ll have an easier place to take care of as they get old.

I don’t want any of that. No one does. I’m not ready for that, and probably no one ever is, but knowing that does nothing at all to make it easier.

“All done,” Mary asked me when I got my tears down to sniffles.

“Mhmm,” I squeaked.

“Can I leave you alone for a minute while I get a washcloth to wash your face?”

“Yeah.” She always asks that if I have a big cry and she doesn’t take me to the bathroom to wash my face for me. The answer is always yes; not like I’m going to collapse in on myself like a black hole with major depressive disorder … but I really like that she asks.

She was in her pajamas and carrying mine and a washcloth when she came back. “Know what I think,” she said as she sat back down next to me. “I think I was wrong. Face up for me.” She wiped the tear streaks off my cheeks gently like she always does. “I thought some big girl time would make you feel better, but I think what you really need some is little girl time. Honk.”

Holy heck did I heccin honk. Maybe I am getting a little seasonal cold.

“Lay back for me,” she instructed.

“I don’t wanna diaper tonight.” So basically like all the nights.

“Too heccin bad, cuz I say you’re wearing it and I’m in charge. On your back, knees up.” That’s always her fallback position … except when it’s her first line of defense. She gets so insistent when she takes care of me. That’ll learn me who I put in charge of me. And did you hear what kind of time she said I needed? Do not and am not! Really! Hmmph! But I was too tired and bummed to even put up a fuss about it.

“Good job being my helper and getting your pampers on.”

“Marrry,” I straight up whined. No artifice. I did it: I whined.

“Stand up. Let’s get your footie pajamas on you.”

“I’m only cooperating cuz I like how fuzzy those are,” I said as she helped me into those pajamas. Never actually sleep in them because I’d die of heatstroke overnight, but fine for before bedtime.

“You’re putting no conviction into your whines at all.”

“Yeah, but don’t read anything into it.”

“You want your soother,” she said as she produced a pacifier from her pocket.

“You mean my ‘shut up plug?’”

“I never called it that!”

“I know – I called it that cuz you get it out when I’m about to talk myself into trouble.” It’s saved me from some serious spankings, which is why I don’t hate but also don’t love it. It’s helpmeet and a buzzkill at the same time.

“Here if you change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

“How do you feel?”

“… A little better now that I got all that off my chest … and fuzzy.”

Mary smiled and closed her eyes and shook her head at me. “C’mere.” I did and I hugged her tighter than she hugged me this time, on purpose cuz physical affection is one of my love languages.

“Thank you for listening to me lose my shit.”

“I like being there for you when you lose your shit. Do you wanna pick out a movie while I make hot cocoa?”

“‘Kay.”

“Nothing over PG,” she told me and turned before she could see the face I made at her … And then I followed her. Fun fact: if you’re wearing footie pajamas without the slipper sole on them, you can glide across hard floors silently. I don’t recommend it cuz it’s a good way to break every bone in your body, but I have skillz. I made Mary jump when she turned around and saw me leaning on the doorframe.

“What happened to picking out a movie?”

“I already did … in my head. And it’s a total coincidence that it’s PG. Home Alone is a great Christmas movie.”

“I like that movie. You gonna help or just watch?”

“I like watching you. But I also like helping you.” And it’s best not to leave Mary alone in the kitchen. She’ll make something healthy if you don’t keep an eye on her.

“C’mere,” she said to me again, and I skated across the floor. “I should’ve gotten you the ones with soles. You’re gonna break your neck. I miss when I first got them and you were terrified to walk down the stairs in them.”

“I practiced.”

“Daffy?”

“Mhmm?”

“You okay now?”

“Mhmm. I just needed to cry. Thanks for the push.”

“Any time.”

“I’ll do the same for you when you need to do it.”

“I know you will.” She put her arm around my waist and gave me a peck on the cheek while we waited for the milk to get hot.

“Love you.”

“Love you more.”

“Love you muchly.”

“Mary? Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas. It’s gonna be great.”

“Can we put up the tree tomorrow?” Tell ya a secret: if she said no, I was gonna do it anyway.

“Yep.”

“Can I wear panties when we do it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Can we make cocoa for it and add alcohol to it?”

“A little bit.”

“Good. That’s how I like it.” Just a little Bailey’s.

We’d make it a great Christmas. I knew we would. Big happy reunion, and yeah, change. I’ll miss my childhood home, but as long I have Mary and she has me, I have my true home wherever we are so long as it’s together.