Chapter Text
Medda watched the party unfold from a chair at the table, a cup that was always full of lemonade in her hands. That was her privilege as the grandma; she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to, and right now she didn’t want to jump on a trampoline or gossip. She was very happy to just watch and ponder.
Jack was certainly a subject on which she had pondered before, and undoubtedly would do so again. He had been a hard kid to raise, always looking for attention that hadn’t been given to him before, and always coming up with the most creative and troublesome ways to get attention. She had been lucky to meet him when she did, just when he was fit to burst under the pressure of not knowing if he could be enough - or anything at all, and she had been craving a way to get out of her own head and her own world. His need for attention never quite went away, but he channeled it into art and helping other people, with her help, and she learned how to take care of someone who wasn’t herself. His heart overflowed with love, so much so that it could have been seen from outer space, and certainly was seen by the two young people to whom he proposed and with whom he adopted a baby. As she craned her neck to see him, she found him on the edge of a foam pit, holding his daughter over it like in The Lion King. He pretended to throw her in, causing her to scream with glee. Then, he threw himself into the pit, yelling as he went, pulling Ivy to his chest and landing on his back so he was sure not to crush her. She smiled, and moved her eyes.
She remembered the day she first met Sean. He was an angry kid, angry at the lot he’d been given in life, angry at everyone he’d met who hadn’t been able to solve his problems, angry at the way that some people suffered while others thrived. He didn’t smile at her or Jack the first month he was there; he barely spoke for the first two weeks, except to tell them to call him Spot. Later, he would tell them that it was because he liked them too much. He thought they were too nice to him, and he couldn’t bear the idea of them wasting their time on someone like him. He came around eventually, and joined in on family dinners and movie nights and trips to the grocery store. And then came Albert and Race, the “best friends” who invited him over every month for so long that she felt guilty and had to have them over once every third month. She knew that what happened on those nights wasn’t quite friendly, but of course she didn’t care. This boy had been so averse to the idea of friends or more when he first came to live with her that she was simply happy that he was happy. His going off to college was bittersweet, but she couldn’t have been more proud of him. Or at least she thought that she couldn’t have been. This moment rivaled his high school and college graduations for all they had. Even his wedding didn’t compare much to seeing him playing with two four-year-olds, and hearing him say the words ‘our sons’. The boy who once had been so scared to love his foster mother because she might love him back became the man who loved his children so much that he wasn’t sure he could contain the emotion and couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
She also remembered the first time she met the birthday girl. Two months old, dressed in green (“Because it’s a gender neutral color, Davey!” “Kath, colors don’t have genders at all.” “We are raising our child without any ideas of what pink or blue might mean in society, you - jerk.”), with her blonde hair sticking straight up in tufts. Sarah’s eyes were big and puffy, like it had been too long since she had slept. Medda had never had a baby of her own, but she was almost certain it had been too long. Nevertheless, both Sarah and Katherine were glowing as they handed Medda her - what was it, great-niece.
“Hi,” Medda had crooned, and Stella had given the faintest sign of a smile.
“She’s adorable,” she gave the moms back their baby. Even though she didn’t know what it was like to have a newborn, she most certainly did know what it was like to not like seeing your child with another parent. She didn’t know Sarah and Katherine that well, but they had become Jack’s best friends as well as his in-laws, so she supposed that she liked them well enough. They made him smile almost as much as his spouses did. And they were sweet, ambitious girls. They would be incredible mothers; they were made for this role, unlike herself. She had been a good mother, she supposed, but she had never felt as though she was meant to be a mother, or that she was the perfect mother. But if she could end up with two boys like Spot and Jack, then surely Katherine and Sarah could end up with a beautiful child.
She smiled at the thought as Katherine walked up with slices of birthday cake. They hadn’t bothered keeping the cake in once piece, since they weren’t really going to give candles to a one-year-old. Everyone dug into the pieces that she passed around, and even though it was clearly store-bought, everyone commented on just how delicious it was and how thankful they were that Katherine and Sarah brought it for them. And then Medda smiled some more.