Talking with Sage

 

I think that of all my children, Sage has been affected the most by all the changes that have happened recently – Sety and AJ’s sentence, Satis moving to Egypt, our own move to Hidden Springs, and her own birthday and adolescence.  And now, my latest pregnancy is yet another shock to her system.  She’s really had a tough time, and I have to admit, I don’t know how to deal with it.

I didn’t realize the depth and breadth of Sage’s problems until I read her letter and especially, until we were in Dr. McGaw’s office.  We were standing there, wearing clothes picked out for us by the show’s staff, screaming at each other with cameras in our faces, and yet, we didn’t even know what we were screaming.  I suppose I could’ve been upset that she’d had the temerity to drag us onto a national TV show to air out our private family problems.  But that wasn’t it, either. 

And poor Sage just looked at me and asked, “Mom, why are you yelling?”

And I had to just stop.  And walk away. 

She couldn’t even get angry with me.  All she could do was sob. 

She’d been crying the whole time she was in Dr. McGaw’s office.  I thought she’d bawl her eyeballs out.  That’s Sage, though, so sweet and sensitive. So unlike me.  The only things she and I have in common are blond hair and our last name. 

So there we were, sitting in counseling as Sage continued to launch grenades at Andy and me – mostly me. 

“You missed my ballet recital,” Sage had shouted with tears flowing down her cheeks, “you missed everything!  All because you were working.  I would have given my life for you to be at the recital.  Dad was there, Sety and Satis were there, even Grandma and Grandpa were there.  You weren’t.”

“I’m sure you were beautiful, baby,” I told her. 

I kept seeing my own arguments with my mother in flashback.  We were so different, we couldn’t see eye to eye – and I was now dealing with the same thing with Sage. 

Sometimes I think, my mother would have loved to have had Sage for a daughter.  I still think I was such a disappointment to her, a tomboy interested in history, archeology, and paranormal activity instead of music. 

“Why don’t you keep a journal?” I suggested to her one day we were in the dining room.  I also suggested she get involved in some activities at school so she could meet new people.

Which she listened to for the most part.  She joined the Art Club and the Newspaper Club, which will both improve her writing and painting skills.  She has that artistic side she got from my side of the family and she went to the theater and took guitar classes. 

 

Her heart, though, appears to be with animals and nature.  She has that outdoorsy streak from my husband.  She is (mostly) a vegetarian and has really taken to Bitsy and Traveller, the Hanoverian show horse we got her for her birthday. 

"What's the square root of two?" Sage mumbled under her breath while doing what appeared to be her algebra homework.
I was concentrating on my latest piece on the Hidden Springs mystery when I murmured, "not now, I'm in the middle of writing this article for the Paranormal Review."

"Ninety-nine over seventy," I whispered.

"Come here, Sage-blossom."
I denoted my oldest biological daughter by her full given name.  It’s actually Sage-blossom Margaret, but nobody calls her that.

"Sage-blossom, you know that we're having another baby, right?"
She sighed.
"Everyone is going to have to take on even more responsibility to help out. When your brother comes home, he's going to have to take on more responsibility too. When Sety and Satis return they're going to have to take on more responsibility. Fact is things are going to have to change around here -- and it starts with me."
I thought she was finished but she wasn't. "I haven't been the mother I could have been or I probably should have been because I've been working, but now that I've reached the top of ghost hunter career that's going to change."
"From now on I'm going to be spending more time with you guys. It may not seem like I love you, but I do. I love you guys more than life itself. When I got sick with that virus in the middle of my quest for Pangu's Axe I had to make a choice -- continue with my search for the weapon, which would have immensely helped my career, and, by the way, would have greatly impaired or even eliminated my ability to have more children -- or go back home and have you, and get the medical treatment I needed. Sage-blossom, it was a no brainer. It was a decision I'd make again and again."
I put my head down on the table and broke down in tears. I felt Sage’s arm around me.