Baby Drama

 

I wish being pregnant wasn’t such a pain in the rear.  The maternity leave is nice but does it have to hurt so dang much?  At least Satis and I can compare notes on the latest printed words we’ve read.  She’s as addicted to books as I am, and since she’s been here she’s been gobbling up new ones – and I’m happy to report, they’re all in Simlish, so her command of the language is improving by leaps and bounds. 

That doesn’t mean she’s forgotten her roots.  She decided to sing “Where is my mummy?” in Arabic to my stomach, and I felt a kick or two.  I guess the kid liked it. 

That evening I pilfered Andy’s car and drove myself to the hospital because he was at work.  He showed up about two hours later, and the kid was almost out by then. 

Welcome Andrew Jeffrey “AJ” Plumb into the world. 

Announcement

This is probably gonna be my shortest JPN post ever.  But … I’m pregnant!  Not sure how to feel about this, to be honest.  I mean, there are 2 older children here, both soon to be teenagers.  How are we going to handle a baby in the house?  Thank heavens for Halima, I guess.

The Last Ninja

I painted this one picture in my yard and decided to submit it to my publisher to put it on my book jacket. 

My second novel, The Last Ninja, based on Oriental mythology, is due out any day now.  That’s how the book jacket looks now.  Awesome, huh? 

Meeting with the Mayor

 

After Harper Phillips became Leader of the Free World, this woman, Kyra Paxton, became mayor of Sunset Valley.  Apparently she started out as a clerk in his office, and then worked her way up.  The rumor is that she slept her way up but that’s another story for another time.

 

 

Anyway, I was summoned to City Hall on Saturday to receive an award from Mayor Paxton.  She then issued a proclamation declaring the day “Savannah Plumb Day.”

As I stood there, basking in the confetti and the cheers from the hometown faithful, I looked around and noticed Andy in his Llama soccer-team warmups.  “I came as soon as I could,” he said. 

There he was, standing beside me all sweaty.  But, he’s Andy, and I wouldn’t trade him for the world.  As far as I was concerned there was no one else there. 

Family Matters

As most of you reading this blog know, I kind of have an obsession with history and genealogy -- anything to do with the past. 

Well at the behest of someone I got a Facebook page.  I’ve made quite a few contacts there, including one called Reign-Louise Jolina. 

If the name Jolina sounds familiar, it should.  It’s my paternal grandmother’s last name.  It’s also one-half of my father’s last name, the other half, of course, being Plumb. 

Apparently I have another family I never knew about.  I mean, I suspected all of this… but to have it confirmed, well, it’s a surprise.  I knew my grandmother was a bit of a flirt, and I knew my grandmother was very charming and had a lot of admirers of the opposite sex, but there’s still so many un-answered questions.   

So Reign-Louise’s daughter writes:

I think we're so related I forgot to tell you that RL's dad was Jamie Jolina's son. It just mean you and RL were first cousins.

Goodness, if my tangled family-tree doesn’t get any crazier…you mean I have an uncle somewhere?  And more cousins? 

But wait, there’s more.  The conversation continues. 

Marlon - RL's dad, was also left by Jamie at the hospital and was just claimed by his dad with a note from Jamie, from then on they haven't heard from her anymore.

And…my response:

Apparently Jamie left RL and her dad... for my grandpa. That's the only way I can see it happening. My grandfather was smitten with her and wanted to marry her, but she didn't wed him either. According to my grandma's diary, she had real reservations about marriage in general and was shocked that she was pregnant with my dad. Seems like she left behind a trail of broken hearts. :(

And to top it off, mom wasn’t done with her truth serum.  Apparently she spent part of her childhood in Twinbrook and moved to Sunset after turning YA.  When her dad disappeared and her mom died, she went to stay with a family friend, Edmund Browning, who wasn’t much older than she was. 

My Side of the Story

Some girl has been following me around, like a stalker.  It’s creepy.

 

I had gone with Francy to the cemetery to tend to the gravestones when I spotted the top of a white hat behind some obviously fake bushes. 

"Pathetic," I muttered to myself. "If she thinks she's got anything on me, she's got another thing coming."

 

 

She showed up to my parents’ house at about 7 that evening, just as Andy had walked in from selling snacks at the stadium. 

 

 

Then she has the nerve to start digging in my trash can. 

 

Just so happened, while that was going on, Neil was walking in from his job at the supermarket. 

 

"What are you doing?" he'd asked her.
"I'm going to bust your aunt," she said. "Apparently she's been stealing gravestones and making synthetic ectoplasm."  I’m told Neil looked at her like she was nuts.  And for her to make THAT claim, she was.

 

She walked right in past Neil, and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw her come towards me in the kitchen. 

She had the gall to walk into my kitchen while I was cooking dinner, with my husband standing right there. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" I asked her.

 

“I’m Mary Keene,” she said, “and I’m a private investigator hired by the proprietor of the mausoleum.”

“What do you want?”

"Miss Savannah Plumb," she began, "I have it on very good authority that you have been conducting personal experiments on ghosts in the cemetery."

I laughed in her face. "What do you mean by "personal experiments?"
"Oh come now, your whole 'ghost hunting' thing is a complete farce, and you know it."
"It's what I do, just like you do what you do.”

"You've been creating fake ectoplasm with food coloring and corn starch, and you've been stealing gravestones and urns from the cemetery."
"What are you talking about? I'm a paranormal expert, for crying out loud. I've been dealing with spooks and banshees since before I was even born. I learned I could talk to ghosts as a little girl, and at times I feel like I’m more at home with them than with the living."

I tried to explain to Mary that I have no need to make fake ectoplasm, that the ghosts secrete it themselves.  I told her that the food coloring and the corn starch was to authenticate the ectoplasm, and that ever since my mother had revealed some secrets to me about my heritage, my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I wanted to find out what had happened to my grandparents. 

The Morning After, Part 2

My mother summoned me to the mansion the next day.  She didn’t want to see the kids, or Andrew – just me. 

As most of you know from reading this blog, my mother and I have had a difficult relationship.  The fact that we pretty much look alike (except that I’ve inherited the Plumbs’ English-rose complexion) has not helped.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually do love my mother.  She is my mother, after all, I did come out of her.  But as I’ve gotten older (and adopted children of my own) I’ve realized that she is a product of a different time and place, and has behaved accordingly. And for that reason, I’ve begun to cut her a bit of slack.  In truth, I actually feel sympathy for my mother.

I’ve known for awhile that she has been harboring secrets about her heritage – and, in turn, mine and Sebastian’s.  For as much as I am my father’s daughter, I am too also hers.  I’ve known for awhile that these secrets have caused her great pain, and these are things that she didn’t even tell my father – and I’m still not sure she has told him. 

I know that my mother is an intellectually brilliant woman and that I have miles to go before I catch up to her mentally, if I ever do.  My father has said as much, that the main reason he was attracted to her was her mind, and that she reminded him of his mother, also highly intelligent.  I know that my mother has only told me bits and pieces of the truth – that her mother was cruel to her and her father disappeared when she was quite young, leaving her subjected to her mother’s capricious whims.   All I know of my maternal grandparents is that my grandmother was a short-order cook and my grandfather was a jack-of-all-trades sort who traveled, painted, wrote, and gardened.  Oh, and did I mention he dabbled in inventing?

“I summoned you here because I know I am soon to go with the Reaper, and I cannot let the truth go with me.”

“Remember that story that your Aunt Margaret told you about when you were still in my stomach, how I went into the cemetery at night to fish?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s true.”  My mother was frank.  “I’m the cause you do what you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Savannah, I’m an ambrosial.  And so are you.”

“Ambrosial?  What do you mean?”

“Before he disappeared, my father had been doing research on ambrosials and he left behind specific instructions for becoming one.  My mother sought to hide these instructions from me but I found them anyway.  As soon as I was old enough I followed them to the letter.  Thus, I am an ambrosial, which simply means that I am able to cook a special recipe called ambrosia, that consists of life fruit and death fish.  And you can only go into the cemetery late at night between the hours of 12 am and 5 pm to catch them.  Hence, my late night trips.”

“My mother passed away just before I turned teen, and her death was regarded by the police as suspicious.    Apparently, when they found my mother, she was lying in a pool of water, next to a television and some oddly placed sprinkler heads.  I was asked all kinds of questions.  To this day they still don’t know what happened to her.  At any rate, with both of my biological parents gone, I went to live with a family friend, Edmund Browning, who helped me with my instruction in music and art.”

“I met your father when we were both trying out for the Sunset Valley Orchestra.  I’d just gotten here with my two older daughters, and I was simply looking forward to something to do. I was certain that he was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but he wasn’t as confident, and neither was your Aunt Margaret, especially given that I am older than he is.  People thought your father was ‘weird’ and ‘spacey,’ but I was especially intrigued when he’d told me that he’d once entertained the Grim Reaper himself.

“I did two things when I got pregnant.  The first thing was, since your father wanted a daughter so badly, I ate three watermelons in succession, as I’d learned that eating them increased the chances for a girl child.  And then, since I didn’t want to be an old lady training a toddler, I called upon my prior knowledge of herbs and fish to go to the cemetery and cook the recipe.  The recipe has the power to temporarily reverse aging.  I also made enough for your father, as well as your Aunt Margaret.  Without it she would not have lived to see you grow up.”

“So yes, I am the cause you are the way you are.  I am the reason for your interest in the paranormal.  I should not have been surprised when you got this job, but I was.  I didn’t think you’d actually follow through on it, for some reason.  I think on some level I didn’t want you to end up like me or like your grandfather.  I’m the one that slipped that death flower into your knapsack just before you went on that trip to Egypt.

“I got pregnant again for the sole purpose of bringing forth another ambrosial – and I chose your father as the sire.  In my mind’s eye, he was perfect – blond hair, blue eyes, toned physique – he looked to me like a Norse god, yet he claims not to have any Scandinavian heritage.”  She laughed.  “Falling in love with him, actually, was not part of the plan.  But I did.  I fell madly, completely, truly in love with him, and everything about him, even (and especially) his quirks.  That’s why I was as willing as I was to wait for him to commit.  I realized that men like your father don’t come along very often.  Sure, he is eccentric and he’d be the first one to say it, and his eccentricity is a by-product of being prodigiously talented.  But deep down, he is a good man, a decent man, who means well.  And he thinks the world of you.  I saw the same thing in Andrew, and hoped that you would marry him – and lo and behold, you did.  I hope, for your sake and his, that you married him because you are madly, truly, completely in love with him, not because I wanted you to be settled.”

My mother handed me, perhaps, the ultimate wedding gift.  No, not the ambrosial book she’d studied as a girl – which she did give me, by the way – but the truth.

Even if it hurts. 

It is this complicated heritage – my mother’s as well as my father’s – that I pass on to my children.  I can only hope that they absorb these lessons a lot better than I did. 

The Morning After, Part 1

It was the morning after my wedding, and all was silent.  There would be no honeymoon, at least, not yet.  Andrew and I had to go back to work, and Imsety and Satis were starting school.

In that vein, I decided to pay a visit to the school to have a little chat with their teachers.  I told their teachers their entire story.  Apparently those poor kids had never seen the inside of a school building before in their lives. 

This is my new tool of the trade.  It’s a ghost-mobile, fully equipped with ectoplasm sensors, poltergeist detectors, and spirit seekers.  There’s an old ham radio in here which I’m going to have upgraded as soon as I can.

 

Poor Ari had her beach house hit again….

And the ghosts are getting nastier too. 

These bullies had the gall to try to attack me.  But why are they in medieval dress?  I’m sure from my reading that Sunset Valley didn’t exist that long.  So where did they come from?

Imsety, bless him, is trying to help out with his muffin stand.  Since he doesn’t know too many people yet, he’s figured out it’s a great way to meet new people.

And they left an ice cream canister on the kitchen table.  Ahhh… kids.

Wedding of the Year, Part 3

My dad was outside playing his song “Savannah’s Serenade” when mom and I walked outside.  I heard he’d composed it just for the wedding.  I detected some Egyptian rhythms in it, too.  Guess the adage of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks doesn’t really apply here.  Despite his advanced age, his fingers still glide effortlessly across the guitar strings, just as they did when he was younger.

 

Dad and Ari took a seat with me at the reception.  “Princess, such a beautiful ceremony,” he’d whispered. 

“Yeah, it was nice,” Ari agreed.

“Hey Ari,” I whispered, “I have it on good authority that you’re dating Harper Phillips.”

Ari’s eyes shot up.  “I am not!”

“Then how come the gossip pages say you were at a campaign fundraiser with him?”

“Oh, come on, Vanna, you know I don’t roll like that.”  She then confessed, “I got a job in journalism and I covered his campaign for the Times.” 

“You know,” I reminded Ari, “you are the last person I expected to be a political wife.”

“You’re the one who’s married to a farmer,” Ari teased back.

I had to correct her and tell her he’s in athletic, but gardens and fishes as a hobby.

“Mr. Phillips is not bad,” my dad chimed in.  “He’s smart, he’s a hard worker, he’s ambitious --“

 

Meanwhile, Andrew and I took our time and enjoyed Halima’s feast.  “Um, that was pretty intense with you and your mother,” he muttered.

“Yeah, a bit of history there, I’m afraid.”

“She’s going to come around. She has to.”

“She’s my mother, Andrew.  What girl doesn’t want her mom around?”

Andrew and I have an unusual arrangement.  Though we are married in the usual sense of the word, we do not refer to each other by the traditional terms of husband and wife.  We prefer to talk about our union as a partnership. 

 

There we were, dancing under the moonlight, with dad’s melodies serenading us. 

 

I looked around and my children were sitting at a table, speaking to each other about homework – in Arabic, I might add.  I will not take that away from them, their heritage and their memories.  I only seek to give them new ones. 

 

When Andrew took the kids home I found myself alone – with dad.  “I get misty-eyed when I think of how much you’ve grown, Sweetpea,” dad began.  I hadn’t heard “sweetpea” since I was a child.  “You know, when you were born, I’d had 4 sons and was so thrilled that I finally had a little girl that I wrote a little kids’ book about it.  I kept it in my files until the time was right, so now – the time is right.”

He handed me an illustrated little book, but it was so much more.  It had pictures of me when I was younger and little captions underneath them. 

I’m going to miss my father like mad. 

Wedding of the Year, Part 2

Cheesie seems to have really taken to Satis. Right after the wedding she was the first person he talked to.

Meanwhile, I took out my guitar for the first time since the last major wedding in our family and entertained guests with my rendition of my dad’s special wedding composition. I’d played it once before, at Noah’s wedding, and we know what happened there.

Midway through the song, I noticed Neil going through one of his patented freak-outs. My mother just kind of stared at him, but HIS mother had her back turned. Good thing Bassy was there, he took Neil into the bathroom and calmed him down. Poor Neil, I feel sorry for him sometimes.

When I finished the song everyone had gone to eat the feast Halima prepared -- except for one person.

“Savannah Rachel,” my mother began in a hushed, halting voice, tears streaming down her face. “My Savannah Rachel – I never believed this day would come.”

“What day?”

“The day you’d wed. At one point I thought you’d never marry.”

“What made you think that?”

“Seriously, Savannah, you weren’t exactly rushing to the altar.”

“Neither did you. It took forever for you and Dad to tie the knot.”

“Well that was because of him, not me. The moment you were born I wanted to marry him but I was willing to wait until he was ready to commit.”

“To be frank, I’m not sure I would have waited as long as you did.”

Mom managed a chuckle. “Okay, Savannah, you got me there.”

She decided to change the subject. “You know, Savannah, that’s an – interesting – choice of attire for a wedding.”

“We are not going to go through this right now, not on my wedding night and CERTAINLY not in front of my daughter.” When I said that, I’d just realized Satis was standing right beside me. And it felt damn good referring to her as “my daughter.”

““If I’m not mistaken, it’s MY wedding, and I have the prerogative to do as I please, and that includes my clothing.”

“Don’t you think you’ve taken this Egypt obsession a little too far, Savannah?” she asked me. “Most people go on foreign trips, they come back with memories of that trip and that’s pretty much it. Not you – nooooo. You wrote a book about it, your room at home is full of Egyptian decor, you chose Egyptian music for this wedding, you even adopted two Egyptian kids and hired an Egyptian nanny.”

“Mother, I can take grief about my own personal choices, but you can be damn sure that I am not going to allow you to disparage my daughter’s homeland in front of her!” I told Satis to join her brother at the reception but she wouldn’t leave my side.

I took a deep breath. “You have to understand, mother, that the moment my feet touched the ground there I became a completely different person. That trip changed my entire life, in so many ways. You know if it were up to me I’d actually still be living there.”

My mother, try as she may, is not going to change who I am. She didn’t succeed when I was growing up and she is not going to now. “That’s what inspired me to write “Interview with a Mummy.” I was so overcome by the mystery and intrigue of the land. I spent four days alone in an Egyptian pyramid. When you spend four days alone anywhere, you do a lot of thinking.”

“You know, Savannah, I re-read the book with a different frame of mind, and I actually did like it. There were just certain passages in it that, well, hit a little too close to home for me. I figured out right away that you were writing something like an autobiography. Like your description of Saundra Burroughs as a washed-up actress who struggled to understand her daughter. There were a couple of occasions where I wanted to kill Saundra for not seeing things that were so obvious. Savannah, I have to admit – I struggled with you too. There are times when I look at you and it’s like looking in a mirror, because you’re just like me. Savannah, you ARE me, except blond, and prettier, and stronger, and smarter, and that’s what scares me.”

“You wanted to be blond?”

“Growing up, more than anything. My mother was blond and she hated me because I wasn’t. I pretty much look exactly like my father. She spent the whole time making me feel very, very small, like I was less than anyone. So I was determined to prove to her that I could succeed despite not being blond. My mother would have LOVED you.”

“After you grew up, if you wanted to be blond so badly, why didn’t you just dye your hair?”

Mom shook her head. “I wanted to get as far away from my mother’s influence as I could. So I kept myself as a brunette. Then I met your father --”

After mom left to join the reception, I thought about just how truly sad the whole story sounded. Hating your kid just because they have the wrong hair color. It’s a pity that my mother seemed never to be truly happy, despite her success, until she finally convinced my father to marry her.

Just then Satis came to chat about the wedding. “I’m happy you got married, mommy.”

Just hearing that word “mommy” out of her mouth made me realize just how much about my life was different now. I glanced over at Satis, so fragile and malleable at her age, and even though she is not biologically my daughter, the moment I met her I felt an unshakable bond towards her and a desire to protect her from everyone and everything. I hope in my heart of hearts not to make the mistakes that 2 generations of Bellingham women have made with their children.