I just couldn’t help thinking that Maggie and Fern deserved a better place. A bigger place. Something with enough room for Fern to really run around and be a kid, and a nice big proper kitchen, and a backyard where Fern could have her own swing set…
I jolted myself back to the present as I realized I was, of all things, envisioning a house with the three of us, a house where I was living with Maggie and Fern, all three of us together as a family.
Dammit, I did not need to be getting swept up so early. I was still basically auditioning to be in Fern’s life, to be in Maggie’s by default as well, and I couldn’t afford to mess it up by going too fast.
“Mama!” Fern pushed some more ingredients towards Maggie. The kid was obviously trying to help out with dinner, but her help was… well, it was little kid help. If she kept at it, nothing edible was going to get made.
I had to stifle some laughter. It was adorable, no doubt about it. But it was also making Maggie’s job harder.
“Hey, Fern!” I pointed at what looked like some finger paint work hanging up to dry by the window. “Are these yours?”
Fern’s face lit up and she dashed over to me, already full of explanations and chatter. I grinned helplessly, listening to her and asking questions. She was very proud of her work, the way that all kids were. I wished that people could hold onto that simple pride and pleasure in their endeavors—whatever those endeavors might be. Whether it was art, writing, cooking, or whatever, when we were kids we didn’t care about what people thought of us or if the end product was ‘good enough’. We just did it because we enjoyed the process.
Then we became adults and we spent our time feeling judged and inadequate. A lot of my work in my art was trying to unlearn all the criticism that I had taken on and into myself, trying to get back to just being like a kid and enjoying my art because I enjoyed the process of making it, not because I was thinking about creating the perfect end product.
Fern couldn’t be occupied just with her finger painting for long, however, and I quickly asked her to show me around the apartment so that she wouldn’t go back to bothering her mother. Fern eagerly took me to her room immediately.
“You need to meet all my friends,” she announced, waving her hand at the array of stuffed animals on her bed.
“You’ve got a lot of friends,” I said.
“Of course.” Fern climbed up onto her bed and grabbed a stuffed penguin. “It’s because they’re all very sad and I make them happy.”
“…sad?”
That was how I learned that these various stuffed animals all had the most tragic of backstories, having lost family members in floods, fires, and in an attack of rabid werewolves. Apparently everyone had to have a tragic backstory, ‘just like superheroes and television’, and well, I wasn’t about to argue with that logic. Fern was very serious about the health and wellbeing of these poor persecuted stuffed animals and gave them all a cuddle after she introduced them to me.
It was absolutely adorable. I wanted to find a way to preserve this forever. As Fern talked I could see bits of myself in her—namely in her love of art and her imagination. But I could see Maggie in her too, in the forthright way that Fern talked and her firm opinions, her odd sense of humor. Our daughter was a wonderful combination of the both of us, and it made my heart swell.
“Dinner is ready!” Maggie said.
Fern immediately kissed all her stuffed animals goodbye and then dashed back into the living room-slash-kitchen, chanting for sustenance.
Yes, literally for ‘sustenance’. She was such an oddball, and I absolutely loved it.
“C’mere.” I picked Fern up and seated her at the table. She wiggled in her seat, giggling, and my heart swelled about three sizes in that instant. I sat down in another chair, and helped Maggie to get the food onto the table. It wasn’t anything too fancy, just pasta with broccoli, but it smelled delicious. Maggie must’ve inherited Mark’s cooking skills.
I tried not to think too much about Mark, or what he would think of this entire situation. That way lay madness and I was already dancing on the edge of that, being close to Maggie and not doing any of the things I wanted to do to her, with her, and not telling Fern that I was her father.
“Thanks for the dinner,” I told Maggie, digging in. “I appreciate it.”
Maggie shrugged, focusing on Fern. “Don’t mention it.”
I dug into the food, staying quiet as I watched Maggie feed Fern and interact with her. She really was an amazing mother. Not that I’d expected her to be anything less, but it was still something else to watch her in action. They were clearly so close, Fern making Maggie laugh, Maggie making Fern grin and do this wiggle that I quickly realized meant that Fern was happy. They were an amazing little unit, and I only wished that I could share in it.