As the United States of America celebrates two and a half centuries since its founding, one family grapples with its own issues…

I was wondering how to lift a suddenly sombre mood when Bubba ambled over. He had a carrier bag in each hand.
“We got these for the kids. All the kids. And the teenagers. But then we wasn’t sure it was appropriate.”
“If they can’t injure themselves, or anyone else, with whatever’s in the bags then my vote is that it’s appropriate.” Felix said.
“Mine too,” Ophelia managed a grin.
Bubba whistled and his daughters herded a handful of excited kids over to us. He opened one bag and squinted at each child before handing out smallish parcels. When each child had a parcel he held up a large red fist.
“Three, two, one, go!”
I watched my sons deal with wrapping paper with their usual relish. In less time than it took to write this every child was in possession of a bright red t-shirt. A bright red t-shirt with a cartoon dog on the front and the words ‘redneck and proud’. Felix chuckled, then laughed out loud.
“You got one for me Bubba?”
Bubba spared him a severe glance. “Heck no. They don’t make t-shirts for guys your size.”
Ophelia punched her brother lightly in the ribs. “Not even Walmart does t-shirts for Gargantua.”
“Then I guess I’m gonna have to get one specially made to wear when I visit the grandparents.”
Bubba nodded sagely. “Tell you what. You get measured proper and I’ll get one for you, even if I have to weave it myself.”
By the time the young were t-shirted up, the parents returned to the garden.
Mom’s eyes sparkled with merriment, but she kept her voice businesslike.
“Eli, c’n you ferry the good doctor back to his clinic?”
“Yes’m. And do it matter if he falls off a time or two on the way?”
“So long as he ain’t hurt bad it don’t matter a bit.”
Eli kicked the dirt bike into foul-smelling ear-splitting action and headed off.
Luke looked up at me. “That bike’s really cool,” he breathed.
I sighed foreseeing all sorts of shenanigans in my future. Bubba grinned at me.
“They’ll be okay. They got good families.”
Felix’s Pa looked at the t-shirts and he smiled widely. “Look at the children,” had said in a voice of sheer wonderment. “All proudly wearing their shirts and nobody caring which side of the family they sprung from.”
“And the teenagers,” that was my daddy. “They all came here with attitude and now look at them. Just a bunch of kids together. Planning to sneak across and steal a few beers from the cooler while we’re all busy being philosophical.”
Bubba pointed a thick finger and the marauding teens moved away from temptation. His wife came over and leaned against the impressive bulk of his beer belly.
“You were right, hon,” she said then explained. “Bubba reckons we need to teach the kids that we’re all the same under the skin. He said if we gave ‘em an identity they could all relate to, they might stop seeing themselves as two gangs and become one gang instead.”
“Like the Montagues and Capulets,” Felicity sounded awed.
“No ma’am,” that was Bubba again, probably using up a whole year’s allocation of words. “We ain’t bringing these kids up in a Shakespearean tragedy. What we’re doing is reminding them what our forefathers wanted independence to be about.”
I knew what he was saying, but I couldn’t remember the exact words. To my intense surprise it was Anthony who could. He had joined the group quietly and spoke now with dignity but with none of the bombast that had characterised him before the events of the day on which he became a father.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. And that’s why we have decided to call our daughter Liberty. So I have a reminder of the kindness of people I was brought up to look down on.”
And that’s how the birth of a child taught all of us a lesson we had maybe forgotten.
Happy Independence Day everyone!

Jane Jago

As the United States of America celebrates two and a half centuries since its founding, one family grapples with its own issues…

My daddy ambled over to us and lifted his hat to scratch his still blond thatch.
“I left Felicity and Seven having a talk about his parents. There’s a bit of mending needed there. He feels like he let her down, and she feels like she shouldn’t loathe his parents for being holier than thou hypocrites.”
“That’s precisely what they are,” Felix said with an edge of bitterness I’d never heard in his voice.
Daddy looked him in the face. “My Pa used to go out on a Saturday night and come home drunk. Nine times out of ten he was a happy silly drunk who used to sing and go to bed with his boots on. The tenth time he was mean drunk, and we never knew what he might do. When me and your Uncle Elias was sixteen and fourteen, he took his belt to Ma. We took it off him and beat him down. He never touched Ma like that again, but he never forgave us and neither did Ma.”
I put my arms around him and held on tight.
“You did right. Even if you never got anything for it but blame.”
Felix put a hand on Pa’s shoulder.
“My daddy says that no good deed ever goes unpunished.”
Pa smiled. “He’s right, lad. And it was a long time ago.”
My mom had appeared while we were talking and she pulled Daddy into a fierce embrace.
He smiled stronger and kissed her with unashamed love.
“So long as I have you, darlin’.”
“You do. And we never made our parents’ mistakes with our kids.”
“You absolutely didn’t,” I said. “You never even commented when your only daughter decided she wanted to be a tattoo artist.”
Mom laughed. “It’s legal, morally defendable, and pays well. And, anyway, there was never any point in arguing with you.”
Felix laughed. “That’s because she only argues when she knows she’s right.”
My husband knows me entirely too well, and I was consider whether to kiss him or stomp him when Pa lifted a hand.
“Dirt bike incoming.”
Sure enough the rough note of a revving bike engine was being borne towards us on the hot southern wind.
Mom tapped my arm.
“Can you and Felix stop the assembled company from interfering?”
“We can.”
“Good. Me and your daddy and Felicity and Seven need to speak with the doctor, but we don’t need an audience.”
“Particularly not one composed mainly of hounds baying for the good doctor’s blood,” Felix said quietly.
I just gave Mom the thumbs up.
“You go round the front and we’ll keep the assembled eejits out here.”
The moms and dads slipped into the house and shut the door behind them. Felix grinned at me.
“Why do I feel about seven years old right now?”
“It’s a parents thing. I suspect our little shits will feel much the same at some point in time.”
As if the heard themselves being mentioned,Luke and Mark arrived, sticky and smiling, and as always my heart warmed to see how happy and free they were.
Luke swarmed up Felix’s leg while Mark fixed me with serious look.
“Where Grammy and Grandpaw?”
I bent down to his level.
“They’re busy doing parent stuff.”
He frowned. “Is it spankings?”
“Since when has parent stuff included spankings?”
“Great Grandma said your parenting is def-ish-ent and me and Luke would be better for spankings.”
“Then you ain’t gonna be better,” I said firmly. “Because spanking isn’t the sort of parent stuff me and your daddy are about to embrace.”
His smile lit his face from ear to ear.
“And we can carry on dancing?”
Felix laughed. “Course you can, and maybe one day you’ll be able to teach me not to have two left feet.”
Luke had scrambled onto his daddy’s shoulder and he addressed us from his exalted perch.
“I told you Mom and Daddy, wouldn’t listen to them ole fossils.”
Felix and I managed not to laugh. Just.
As we were rearranging our faces Ophelia appeared. She looked suddenly smaller and also angry.
“I’m sorry the twins heard that. The grandparents turned up at Lucinda’s birthday party last weekend. Unannounced and not invited.” She looked close to tears and I put my arm around her shoulders.
“I don’t see it’s any of your fault. I’m sure you didn’t invite them, or their fascinating opinions.”
She managed a twisted smile. “We didn’t but they gave us the benefit anyway. If it’s any consolation, the bloody old fossils were criticising everyone’s parenting rather than yours particularly . Though that doesn’t excuse us not realising Mark and Luke heard and remembered.”
“I wouldn’t take that on your shoulders. These two have phenomenal hearing and recall. When it suits them.”
Luke climbed down from his lofty perch and hugged Ophelia’s leg.
“Never mind tante Ophie. We don’t care bout them old sourpusses. Even if they did say Momma’s got a pink neck.”
“Red,” Mark corrected him. “They said Momma’s got a red neck and naughty blood.”
Felix went very still.
“Did they indeed?” His voice was low and dangerous.
The twins looked up at me and spoke as one child.
“Oh. Oh. Sounds like somebody’s in trouble.”
Felix bent down so his face was level with them.
“Somebody is, but it’s not you, little men.”

More of this tale by Jane Jago tomorrow…

As the United States of America celebrates two and a half centuries since its founding, one family grapples with its own issues…

I looked at my mom and felt a surge of pride. Winking away sudden tears I stood up and hugged her tight. She hugged back before looking at Daddy.
“You want your bag from the Ute?” he asked.
“Please hon.”
He ambled off at that folksy pace that looks slow but covers the ground pretty darned fast.
“Could do with a shower in a minute,” Mom murmured before turning her head to look at Cletus’ son Eli. “You got that horrible motorcycle with you, boy?”
He grinned. “Yes’m.”
“Do you think you could get to the service road that runs behind doctor thingy’s birthing centre?”
“Yes’m.”
Mom’s smile was just the acceptable side of vicious. Just.
“Me and Anthony, who seems to have suddenly remembered where his balls reside, think the good doctor needs to be inconvenienced. So he’s waiting outside the back door of his birthing centre to be brought here to pronounce Portia fit and well.”
Cletus looked at her and his grin matched hers for sheer spite.
“Eli’s Harley’s a bit too comfortable to be real justice. But his dirt bike’s still in my truck from the weekend.”
“His dirt bike?” I found myself chuckling. “That darned thing doesn’t hardly have a pillion.”
“He’ll have to hang on tight then,” Maybelle offered.
The battered beast that was Eli’s dirt bike having been lifted out of the bed of his daddy’s truck. Eli rammed a disreputable pisspot helmet on his head and shoved a full-face helmet with a very rude painted slogan on his left arm. He straddled the beast and leapt on the kickstart.
“Come on you smelly bitch.”
Three kicks and the engine growled into life. Eli dropped the clutch and blipped the throttle as he drove off at a truly injudicious pace.
I looked at Felix. “Surely nobody in their right mind, let alone a big shot doctor, is gonna climb on the back of that thing behind that lunatic.”
Felix laughed. “He almost has to. Or he’s going to look such a pussy.”
“Heads he loses. Tails he loses visibly,” that was Felix’s father whose smile put even Eli’s in the shade for pure unapologetic viciousness.
Daddy reappeared with the old carpet bag Mom kept a change of clothes in under his arm. He passed it to her and put one hand against her cheek.
“Proud of you hon.” Then he smiled at Felix’s pa. “Come on Seven, you and me better go check on the smoker, I don’t trust the modern generation with meat.”
Felix lifted his hands in a gesture of defeat and followed them like a small boy going to the game with his daddy.
Deciding that men were beyond the understanding of a mere female I put my arm through Mom’s.
“Lets get Portia into a nice clean bed, then we’ll find you a bathroom.”
Having admired the red wriggling infant (and before you get sniffy with me, my two were just as red and bore exactly the same expression of disappointment at the world outside momma’s belly), found baby clothes from my saved store (just in case I’m ever mad enough to do it again), provided Portia with a soft nightdress and a clean bed, and given Mom the run of my bathroom, I went back to the garden where the two dads seemed to have taken over the smoker and the grill leaving Felix to loll about on the grass with a beer. I sat beside him and he handed me the bottle.
“What are them two up to?”
“Male bonding.”
I grimaced. “So long as they don’t want matching tattoos.”
Felix laughed. “I can just see them. My daddy with Abe on his left buttock, and your daddy with Seven on his right.”
I sat bolt upright. “I knew there was a thing that was gonna bug me later. Why is your pa called Seven?”
“He isn’t. Not really. His given name is Septimus. But he doesn’t use it.”
“Why Septimus? He doesn’t have six brothers…”
“No. But he’s the oldest son of the seventh generation since his family settled in Louisiana.” That was Felix’s mom, who had arrived on her usual quiet feet. “They expected us to call our son Octavian. As I recall there was something of a nausea when we refused.”
“Was that why Felix’s grandpappy stopped speaking to us for a while when the twins were born?”
“Yes. He stopped talking to us too, expected us to ‘do the right thing’ and pressure you to call one of them Nonus.”
“Mark and Luke didn’t cut it then?”
Felix pulled me into a one-arm half hug.
“They and their mama cut it for me.”
“And me,” his mom smiled warm and gentle.
I understood that both of them were worried that the attitude of the grandparents might have upset me and I hastened to reassure them.
“At the risk of sounding hard boiled I don’t give a damn what them two think. Our sons are healthy and happy and full of shit. None of which is in the gift of that precious pair.”
Felix chuckled reminiscently. “I’ve just remembered what you said after the first time you had the inexpressible delight of meeting Sextus and Patience.”
I had to think for a minute then I remembered. “Oh that. I was just being accurate. American Gothic with more expensive tailoring.”
Momma laughed so hard I was afraid she’d do herself a mischief.
“I have to tell Papa.”
She went towards the smoker and blacktop, stopping every few steps to double over in mirth.
I lifted a shoulder.
“Didn’t think it was that funny.”
“It is funnier than you’ll ever know. Accurate, observant, funny, and from the mouth of a female family member who really couldn’t care less what those two think.” He went quiet for a minute and when he spoke again his voice was almost inexpressibly sad. “For a long time, Papa’s parents made Momma’s life as miserable as they could.”
“And your Pa let them do it?”
“No. They made sure to be sugar sweet when he was about. Which should have warned him, but he was fond of his mother. And he was away from home a lot on a lecture tour so Momma didn’t want to worry him.”
“How’d he find out?”
Felix sighed. “Classic storybook thing. He came home two days early caught them making her cry. By all accounts the row was biblical. Threw his parents out. Physically. Explained that if he never saw them again it’d be too soon.”
I hugged him.
“Seems to me as if Momma’s gotten over it.”
“She has. But Papa’s still haunted by it. Made me promise not to ever let anybody disrespect you.”
I chuckled.
“I hope you explained that disrespecting me is a dangerous hobby.”
“I did. But I think he worried that the family’s attitude might hurt you.”
“I bet that was before he met Cletus and Bubba and the rest.”
“It was. I think today has been an eye opener for a lot of folks.”
“On both sides of the big muddy divide. It’d have been okay anyway, or our moms would’ve known why. But Portia’s baby made them all think.”
“Yeah. New life does that. My family have had to understand that without your mom Portia and her baby would have been in danger.”
“Indeed they would. Natural birthing centre my arse. But my lot saw how yours absorbed the fact they needed mom and did so with grace and gratitude and that meant a lot.”

More of this tale by Jane Jago tomorrow…

As the United States of America celebrates two and a half centuries since its founding, one family grapples with its own issues…

We’d just set our feet on the tiles of the kitchen floor when the joyful sound of fiddle music split the air. Cotton Eye Joe played noisy, swiftly followed by the sound of feet stamping in time with the tune.
Felix looked down at me with devils dancing in his eyes.
“Line dancing?”
Indeed it was. Two lines of dancers, uncles and aunties, cousins and teenagers, and even littles led by our barefoot sons. All stomping on the stones of the patio following in the gigantic footsteps of cousin Cletus and his sprightly wife Maybelle. The music was being provided by my daddy, a man whose fiddling prowess is known in ten counties, accompanied by…
Felix’s mom playing a concert Stradivarius that followed pa’s lead with elegant precision and surprising gusto, Ophelia finger picking an old banjo, and Felix’s dad who had appropriated Cletus’ washboard bass. The band was having a blast and so were the dancers. My side were competent line dancers, though I was pretty sure none of Felix’s family habitually visited the sort of places where bawling fiddles, duelling banjos, and lots of beer, offer a backdrop to dancing until you drop. But they were giving it a real go, helped along by Bubba’s deep throated impression of a square bashing caller. It was riotous and joyful and completely unexpected.
I pinched Felix’s arm.
“Your mom and your sister playing bluegrass? And your Pa doing some damage to a washboard bass.”
He grinned down at me. “Mom isn’t a surprise: she’s always played anything that you can play on a violin. She just keeps the less high-falutin stuff for when she’s among friends. And I shouldn’t be surprised by Ophelia as I’ve never seen an instrument she couldn’t coax a tune out of. But Pop? That’s a facer. In all my born days I’ve never seen him drop his dignity outside the four walls of home. But he surely seems to be having the time of his life.”
We watched quietly as joyful noise welded two groups of people into something resembling family. As Cotton Eye Joe wound to an untidy end, Daddy grinned at his bandmates and swung straight into Achy Breaky Heart.
Felix whistled softly before bending to speak in my ear.
“Two things. Cletus and Maybell. Them two are leading without a moment’s thought, and with never a look at each other…”
“Yeah well they’ve been state champions since the early nineties and they were national champs until they decided they were too old to compete at that level. But they’re still darned good.”
“That’s an understatement babe. And Bubba. I’ve never heard him string more than three words together until today.”
“That’s coz he says his wife and daughters talk entirely too much and somebody has to listen.”
Felix laughed. “Supplementary question. He isn’t really called Bubba is he?”
“No. But when him and Cletus teamed up to terrorise the speakeasies and dancehalls of four counties, Grandpaw thought Cletus and Bubba was a very good joke. And Bubba prefers it to his real name.”
“Which is?”
“Clarence.”
Felix winced. “I see his point.”
“You wanna dance?” I asked my two left-footed spouse as demurely as I could manage.
“About as much as you want to snowboard.”
The dancing didn’t last much longer as the sun was high in a copper-tinged sky and not even my family is mental enough to keep jumping about when the mercury hits eighty-five.
Felix found more cold beers and I liberated two huge pitchers of lemonade from the garage refrigerator. Everyone got a drink and, even without the music and the need to pay attention to their feet, the atmosphere remained friendly with little groups of chatting people lolling about the place.
It was both strange and peaceful at the same time. Daddy came over and helped himself to a big glass of lemonade. I grinned up at him.
“That ain’t gonna do your reputation a lot of good.”
“Maybe not, but if your mom finds me getting hammered while she’s seeing to Portia I’m gonna wish I’d never been born.”
“Whose idea was the line dancing?”
“Bubba. He looked at me and said something about idleness breeding prejudice, and dancing feet bringing joy. I had a quick think and enlisted Fenella quickly. The rest is history.”
“Fenella?”
“That’s my mom,” Felix offered.
“Why’d I not know that?”
“Because you call her Momma, like we all do.”
I nodded.
“Guess I do, but whatever we call her, she and Daddy rescued what could have been awful and made it something warm instead.”
“They did. And without breaking a sweat.”
Daddy lifted one meaty arm and squinted at his shirt.
“Nope,” he said, “Fenella may not have sweated any, her not being the type of female to sweat, but I’m as damp and soggy as I can hold together.”
“You want a dry shirt?” Felix offered.
“Thanks but no thanks. I really would get ribbed if I was girly enough to change a sweaty shirt.”
We lapsed into friendly quiet, just waiting, but patiently and hopefully. When Mom finally came out into the garden, she was grinning from ear to ear.
“We did it. It’s a girl. Nigh on nine pounds. Mom and baby are doing fine. So is daddy even if he has cried a lot.”
Felix’s dad waved a hand in a gesture of celebration and relief.
“Nine pounds isn’t a premature baby, is it?”
“Nope. She’s full term and right now her momma is feeding her.”

More of this tale by Jane Jago tomorrow…

As the United States of America celebrates two and a half centuries since its founding, one family grapples with its own issues…

I whistled two notes and Felix materialised.
“Mom thinks Portia is about to have her baby.”
“What? Sooner than she thinks?”
“No. Round about now.”
“Shit. What needs doing?”
“I’ll get her to sit in the shade and have a nice cold lemonade. You go talk to Anthony. Tell him to get the stick out of his ass because he’s about to become a daddy.”
He sighed. “Wouldn’t you like to talk to him?”
“Nope. He gets right on my tits.”
“Mine too but I’ll brave it.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Can you also send your mom over here?”
Felix’s mom arrived carrying the quiet she always brought with her. She grasped the situation quickly and without fuss.
We got Portia into a comfortable chair in the shadiest part of the garden. When I got close I didn’t reckon she looked too good, her natural pallor had a greyish tinge and her eyes looked as if they belonged to a cornered deer.
“What’s up?”
She looked at me as if surprised I would notice her discomfort.
“I’ve just got a little backache.”
“You sit quiet and rest a bit.”
As she sat her filmy dress lay flat against her stomach and I saw the ripple of a contraction.
So did Mom.
“How long have you been having contractions?” she asked gently.
“Since about breakfast time. It’s only braxton hicks. I called my doula and she assured me it’s too early to be anything else.”
I could feel Mom’s anger, but she kept her voice gentle.
“Have the contractions been getting closer together?”
Portia nodded.
“Then it’s not braxton hicks.”
Portia’s idiot of a husband spoke from behind my left shoulder.
“And you know better than a doula attached to a nationally acclaimed natural birth program?”
Mom looked at Portia’s sweating face and at the contractions moving under the flimsy broderie anglaise of her dress.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes I do.”
“An uneducated redneck woman, whose daughter married above her?”
Before I had chance to retort, Felix’s mom leaned across and clipped him smartly round the ear.
“Quiet Anthony. I expect better manners. Even from spoilt little boys.”
You could have heard a pin drop – until Portia gave a strange little cry.
“I think my waters broke.”
Mom knelt in the grass at her feet.
“Let’s have a look shall we.”
Felix’s mom and I formed a human curtain while Mom spoke gently to the frightened girl.
Anthony opened his mouth to say who knew what, but a large red hand covered his mouth. My cousin Cletus spoke for all of us I think.
“You just hush up now. Auntie Ella-Mae is a community midwife. Been delivering babies for better’n forty years. Right now she’s the best hope your wife and child have.”
You could feel the fight leave him and Cletus removed his hand.
“It’s too soon.”
Mom stood up.
“Soon or late this baby is coming. And it’s coming fast.” She looked Anthony straight between the eyes. “Do I have your permission to assist your wife and child?”
“Yes. Please do. Please take care of them.”
Mom softened.
“I will. You call her obstetrician and tell them she’s dilated two and a bit inches and her contractions are strong.” Then she turned her attention to me. “Half fill your big bath with water nice warm water. And get all your big towels out.”
“Water birth, Mom?”
“Probably not. But she’s scared, and a float in warm water will calm her fears.”
I ran to do Mom’s bidding, leaving behind a plethora of questions but no actual shouting.
By the time our big sunken tub was half full of water Mom was in the room with her delivery bag and the quiet air of confidence that has smoothed countless children’s way into the world. I stood up and went to lay my face against her shoulder.
“How I remember,” I said softly. “I hope Portia has a gentle birth and a strong child.”
Mom touched my cheek. “I remember too. I especially remember how many swear words it took to bring two boys kicking and screaming into my hands. But now. Towels.”
I opened one door of a big linen closet full of towels.
“How many do you need?”
Mom let out a small squeak of surprise. “How many do you have?”
“I’ve never actually counted. Felix’s granny had a thing about towels. She left her collection to him in her will. This is about half. We donated the other half to a shelter for mothers and kids.”
Mom rubbed a hand over her face. “Can you spare a dozen?”
I chuckled and pulled out a pile of soft, thick bath sheets.
“You need me?”
Mom shook her head. “No. Only me, Portia, and her wet weekend of a husband I think.”
I grinned. “Besides which she’s a bit scared of me. It’s the tattoos I think.”
Mom grinned back. “One of the many nice things about having you for a daughter is that I never have to explain things.”
“I love you too Mom.”
Footsteps on the stairs heralded the arrival of Felix, who was carrying his sister, and being followed by a grey-faced Anthony.
“Her doctor is rattled, and desperately trying to claw back the initiative,” Anthony said in a voice devoid of pretension. “Demanded we bring Portia to the birthing centre. But we can’t. There’s a Fourth of July parade happening and the road is closed.”
Mom smiled the smile that has reassured hundreds of expectant parents.
“We’ll just get the baby born and worry about logistics later.”
Felix set Portia gently on her feet and Mom moved into action. Me and Felix left, shutting the door quietly behind us.
On the landing he pulled me into his arms and held on tight. He spoke into my hair.
“You know that I love your Mom.”
I nodded.
“And you know how much respect I have for her.”
I nodded some more.
“But right now all of that pales in the face of the relief I feel that she’s here for Portia. I was pretty unsettled by the idea of a place where they seem to think burning sage leaves will ensure a safe birth. Now I know my silly sister will be okay.”
I looked up at him. “She will. Now we’ve a job to do downstairs. We have to avert class warfare.”
Only we didn’t need to do anything.

More of this tale by Jane Jago tomorrow…

As the United States of America celebrates two and a half centuries since its founding, one family grapples with its own issues…

Felix and me have been married for five years. We met in the middle of a particularly messy post football match fracas. I was standing on the edge of a fountain defending my honour with a chair leg and he came to my rescue. He was six and a half feet of menace, built like a linebacker and obviously in no mood to take any crap from a crowd of overstimulated college boys. He extracted me from the melee just in time to make ourselves scarce before the boys in blue arrived with riot sticks and short fuses. It seemed entirely natural to hunt up a bar well away from the frat boys and have us a quiet drink.
We must have talked for four or five hours, discovering that a tattoo artist from the boonies and an architect whose partnership in a prestigious practice was still new enough to be making him grin could have so much in common, while being sufficiently different for our discussions to have fire and the sharp edge of two minds sparking off each other.
In the end he slept at mine that night, with his big feet hanging over the end of the sofa.
He pretty much never left, and we married the following spring. Our wedding was quiet and informal and kept deliberately low key because of what people of a delicate disposition refer to as family friction. Which is the sort of understatement that makes thing both less and more complicated than they actually are.
Put bluntly, the two families hate each other.
Only they don’t, what they hate is the idea of each other.
Felix’s family thinks my lot are loud, uneducated rednecks, though most of them are too polite to say so. My lot considers Felix to have sprung from a long line of effete, inbred pseudo-intellectuals none of whom has ever done a hands turn of real work, and they aren’t polite enough to keep their opinions to themselves. Thing is neither lot is completely right or completely wrong.
My lot runs long on tow-headed good ole boys with shoulders like brick walls and apparently indefatigable appetites for beer. I even have cousins called Cletus and Bubba.
Felix’s family, by contrast, is mostly slim, and pale, and as bendy as willow trees. His father is a university professor with soft hands and a wispy beard, and his mom plays violin in a semi-professional string quartet. Felix’s sisters are called Portia and Ophelia.
On the other side of the coin, both lots are hardworking, honest, and morally grounded. It’s just that neither of them can see the common ground for the morass of misunderstanding that divides them.
And that’s our problem in a nutshell.
Things have never descended into open hostility from my side for a couple of very good reasons. One: my mom, who is a community midwife and possessed of a glare that could melt stainless steel, would personally disembowel anyone who caused me grief. Two: none of the cousins fancies taking a pop at Felix because they ain’t entirely sure he don’t bend iron bars with his teeth.
From the other side of the divide, politeness is a given, even if there is a certain hauteur about the relationship.
Which is why we don’t go in for much in the way of family celebrations, spending Christmas with one family and thanksgiving with the other.
This worked fine until we bought the house. It’s nothing fancy, just a suburban arts and crafts villa with blue shutters, a big sheltered yard and a swimming pool. And the yard was nearly our undoing.
Our moms ambushed us. Mine appeared at the play park, where I take our three-year-old twins to burn off some of their innate soddishness, while Felix’s took him to lunch at a wholefood restaurant. Different women, different approaches but the message was substantially the same. July fourth was our ‘turn’. We were, like it or not (to be brutally honest ‘not’), hosting a family day in our big shady yard.
When I got home, trailing two sticky, overstimulated, candy-fuelled, argumentative children in my wake, Felix was already there looking as shell-shocked as I felt. But he gave me a hand with bath and pasta duty before throwing himself theatrically onto the big squishy sofa in our family room.
“My mom came visiting,” he announced.
“Mine too.”
“July fourth?”
I nodded.
“Do you think,” he asked carefully, “this was a coincidence?”
“Nope. This was a coordinated matriarch move.”
“They coordinate?”
“Of course they do. They’re both cut from the same cloth.”
He frowned, but then he thought a bit and his grin spread.
“They really are, ain’t they. I just never thought of it like that before. Well. I’ll be jiggered.”
“It does seem odd. But I’ve noticed it a bit before. It’s subtle but the steel magnolia and momma bear are very far from being above collusion.”
He nodded. “So what do we do?”
“First of all we call out their trickery. Then we give in and host July fourth. With stipulations.”
Fast forward to a steaming hot July day, to icy cold beers and a sandwich bar lunch, and to two families dancing carefully around each other like feral cats on a trash tip. But the atmosphere was at least polite.
Felix and the dads kept close eyes on a gaggle of teenage cousins of both genders, thereby keeping flirtations to an acceptable level of touchy-feely, and preventing showing off from degenerating into dangerous dares.
Felix’s younger sister, Ophelia, merry faced and married to a man who had sense enough to step aside from family judgements, happily herded children and prevented any inter-cousin flare ups. I was grateful and brought her a beer. She smiled.
“This was brave of you.”
“You think we had a choice?”
“Nope. Not if mom got involved.”
“Both moms did. Caught us in a pincer movement.”
“Ouch!” Then she touched my arm. “There is something…”
Before she had chance to say what was bothering her my mom appeared beside us. She looked at Ophelia.
“Portia. How far along is she?”
“Eight months.”
Mom shook her head. “She’s gotten her dates muddled. That girl looks to me like she’s about to give birth.”
My mom has been a midwife for close to forty years, so if she says someone is about to give birth you better believe her.
Ophelia frowned. “That’s what I was thinking. And it would be just like her. I have never met a vaguer human being than my sister. She is kind, sweet and loving, but she drifts through life like a rudderless boat.”
I had more immediate problems. “When you say ‘about to’, mom?”
“This very afternoon if I’m not wrong.”
When it comes to pregnancy and babies wrong is a place Mom doesn’t inhabit, so I braced myself for a bumpy ride.
“What should we do?”
“Right now. Get her to sit in the shade and maybe bring her a cool drink.”

More of this tale by Jane Jago tomorrow…

Summer is a-coming in
So quickly now go you
Down the pub to down a beer
And drink a pint or two
Love that brew!

You now chase the beer with rum
And after hours too
Get it as they call last orders
Got to love that brew!

More beer, more beer,
Get in a pint or two,
Ne’er cease to drink that brew!

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Being a true shifter isn’t the blessing it may seem. But through pain and darkness Perdita seeks to find her own life despite the ambition of others…

In the meantime, Mandrake was carefully herding an increasingly terrified orc back to where his pack awaited him. The screams came closer and Gobshite broke out of the treeline at a shambling gallop. When he saw his packmates he hurled himself facedown on the frozen grass.
“Dragon,” he yelled. “Look out there’s a dragon.”
Behind him, Mandrake made the change and dropped the final few feet to the ground in human form.
Knut’s mate grinned so widely I thought her face might crack in half.
“Mega cool.” She offered Mandrake a hugely knotted fist and they bumped knuckles. “Can all dragons do that?”
“No. Only the most highly trained of battle dragons.”
“Useful trick, though.”
“Indeed.”
The rest of the pack had gathered around Gobshite’s quivering figure. One poked him with a booted foot.
“Get up, asshole, there ain’t no dragons here.”
He peered suspiciously about him before he sat up.
“Did you chase it off?”
“Chase what off?”
“The dragon what was hunting me.”
One of the ones I had pegged as female put her face close to his.
“There weren’t no dragon fuckwit.”
Mandrake and his companion came over to me.
“I take it Gobshite is in for a bit of razzing,” I said.
“Was about time that one learned some humility. This hadn’t happened me or Knut was gonna have to kill him sometime soon.”
“In that case…”
“You ain’t like any human I ever met,” she said.
Knut had come across, walking quietly enough so she hadn’t heard his approach.
“May I tell my mate?” I nodded. “Lady isn’t human no more than her mate is.”
“What you saying you old fool? She ain’t no true born critter I ever seen.”
“No. She ain’t. She’s a True Shifter.”
“Don’t you be razzing me. Them’s just a fairy story.”
Mandrake made as of to say something but I put a finger across his lips.
“Mate of the Pack Leader,” I said formally. “Will you show me your fist?”
She looked confused but proffered a huge, scarred and knotted appendage. I laid my own hand on the air beside it and concentrated briefly. The hand and forearm I Shifted was a complete simulacrum of hers. It felt as if it weighed nearly as much as my human body, but I managed to hold it still. She stared, and I let it dissolve back into a human hand.
“Your fist weighs a lot,” I said and I could hear the physical strain in my own voice.
Mandrake moved to the buffet, returning with a thick slice of buttered bread. I sank my teeth in gratefully.
“Shifting uses a lot of calories,” I explained, not caring that I was talking with my mouth full.
The female orc bent her neck in a gesture of respect. “I never thought to meet one such as you.”
“There is only one so far as we know,” Mandrake said.
I swallowed the mouthful of bread and butter I had been chewing.
“There won’t be any more. I refuse to put another being through what I went through to gain my powers. It really isn’t worth it.”
The big she-orc looked into my eyes for a breath, before turning way as if embarrassed. “I don’t believe,” she said to nobody in particular, “that I would like to have the Shifter’s memories.”
Knut, who had stood in unusual quiet while his mate and I worked things out between us, actually tasted the atmosphere with his thick, red tongue. Finding it unthreatening he looped an arm over his mate’s shoulders.
“Not all her memories are bad,” he offered. “I remember a wild ride through the night with a band of marauding orcs streaming across the sky behind a lone female with blood in her eye and The Dagger of Death in her boot top.”
“She got the Dagger of Death?”
“She do and that little bastard don’t miss wherever she throws it.”
The she-orc pushed out her lip in thought. “You led a shitload of orcs on The Wild Hunt.”
“Yup. Must have been seven centuries past. And I never knew Knut was in that raiding party.”
He grinned and farted loudly. “I was on my first pack ride, and when the bikes rose into the sky I all but pissed myself. Fun though.”
His mate turned to him, and I understood that whatever she had to say it was not about anyone but their own selves. I listened anyway.
“Was that the last time the Wild Hunt rode out of the sunset?”
“Last but one. It was not The Lady who led your father to his death.”
“I wasn’t thinking it was. According to Mother it was likely his own stupidity.”
“Likely. He was growing old and unwilling to accept that.”
“And you, Knut. You became Pack Leader in the void.”
“Only after I made a few orcs get dead. But yes. I won the Pack in a void, but I rule it because there is none among the members who can best me.”
She looked at him and her mouth twisted bitterly. “So why did you need to mate with me then? I was told it was to consolidate your hold on the pack.”
He made a harsh sound in his throat. “I mated you from need for you. There is no other reason than that.”
The smile she gave him was so bright as to hurt the eyes, before she thumped him hard on one of his meaty arms.
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Because I thought you mated me for status.”
She groaned as he dragged her into his arms. The female bit her mate’s lip and I saw the blood flow.
“Mine,” he said thickly and she licked his bleeding lip.
I looked away to find Mandrake smiling down on me.
‘Love orc style,’ he whispered in my head, before turning up the music and encouraging me into the dance.
And that was pretty much how the night ended, with drunken dancing and a sense of recklessness.
The orcs finally fell asleep where they dropped from sheer exhaustion and Mandrake and me crawled into the open store and wrapped our tired bodies in thick northland quilts.
Dawn came and our guests awoke. Mandrake helped me to break out loves of bread and slabs of pre-cooked bacon. The orcs made huge sandwiches and rode off munching. I think Mandrake carried me up the stairs to a proper bed.

Jane Jago

Writing inspired by the art of Ian Bristow

Dying might not be so bad. It was living that had broken him. Taken from his family at eight years old, vowed to celibacy before he understood what the word meant, and sold to the highest bidder time after time. His sword had eaten the blood of so many enemies that he felt today was no more than reparation. As the hooded figure came to his side he looked into its compassionate eyes.
“Am I dead?”
“Nearly. Say farewell to your loved ones.”
The Knight spoke the saddest three words under all the stars.
“I have nobody.”
Then he died.

Jane Jago

Ian is an awesome artist and cover designer, you can find his work at Bristow Design or watch him in action creating this picture on ART with IAN.

Some whimsical words on whimsical themes…

Sonnets on sunsets, and quatrains delightful
Odes to beloveds and limericks frightful
Poetic thinking that dances and sings
These are a few of my favourite things

Perfectly pitched prose and vocabulary
Fiendish acrostics to trap the unwary
Tender love stories whose heroines cling
These are a few of my favourite things

When the plot stinks and the words ming
When the Internet’s down
I simply remember my favourite things
And then I forget to frown…

Jane Jago