Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 3: Storms

Prologue: This Is Only Another Test

Venice Beach, California
Sunday, April 2, 1979
(3:00 pm)
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"Lindsey? Can you go upstairs and look in on the baby? I have to get the cake out so we can sing to Julia before she goes down for her nap."

Stevie stood in the middle of the kitchen, the sliding glass patio doors thrown open to let in the ocean breeze and the afternoon sunshine. She was quick to grab Lindsey as he walked through the open doorway, holding four empty Heineken bottles to dump in the trash before bringing refills out to the group of himself, John, Mick and Christopher. Stevie called them The Four Amigos when they got together, and they had been together all afternoon in the yard, part of the big group of people who had gathered for Julia's first birthday.

"No problem, angel," he said as he dumped the bottles. He took a moment to kiss her over the big pink cake on the kitchen counter. "If Chris and John and Mick want more beer, let them come in and get it."

"You tell 'em!" Stevie teased with a wink. He turned to go upstairs to the nursery, but she stopped him. "Linds? Make sure his little feet are in the blanket? He cries if he's not covered all the way."

"I've got it," he said with a smile. "He's my son. We get each other." He watched her smile back at him before he started up the stairs.

Aaron Morris Buckingham was just under three months old and sleeping through his big sister's first birthday party. He had come into the world three weeks early on January 20, 1979, weighing six pounds and looking at the world through the same crystal blue eyes his father had. Unlike his calm, easy-going sister Julia, who was thankfully sleeping through the night by the time her brother was born, Aaron was proving to be just as unsettled and antsy as the man he was named for, his great-grandfather Aaron Jess Nicks. But he was every bit as beautiful as Julia was, and every bit as loved.

Stevie was adding a little pink candle to the top of the thawed-out cake when Lindsey returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, reporting, "He's sleeping like a log, totally fine."

"Thank God...that'll buy us some time to sing with the cake before Julia starts fussing," Stevie said. She looked up into her husband's eyes and saw it all - the road they'd taken to get here, the life they had made, their future. She smiled and said, "Come on, sweetheart. Let's go sing Happy Birthday to our baby girl."

Neither of them had to say a word. The look they shared was enough for each of them to know what the other was feeling.

What they were feeling was exhausted but happy. More exhausted than ever, happier than ever.

And it was only the beginning.

The party in the yard was in full swing, "Miss You" by The Rolling Stones blasting from the speakers Lindsey and Christopher had faced outward towards the deck this morning to prepare. The most important people in their lives - the same group of people who had watched Stevie and Lindsey exchange marriage vows on the beach in Maui last December, were all milling around the yard, eating and drinking and laughing and chatting, wailing for the guest of honor to shove pink birthday cake into her mouth with her hands.

Barbara was the one holding her granddaughter when Stevie and Lindsey emerged from the house with the cake, and the music stopped as everyone turned towards Julia in her little pink dress in her grandmother's arms and cameras appeared from purses and pockets.

"Happy Birthday to you...Happy Birthday to you...Happy Birthday, Julia Robin Buckingham...Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuu!"

Julia, forever Stevie's calm in the middle of a storm, did not cry or get overwhelmed once, not even at all of the flashbulbs and clapping. Stevie and Lindsey held her together over her big pink cake, and she smashed her tiny hand into the icing and began licking it off of her sticky fingers. When she was done, when she couldn't find a spot on her hand to eat, she looked at her mother with wide eyes and said her third word ever.