Seeds of Tomorrow

Six

Anyone who knew Madison Henries-Hernandez in her twenties would never have believed you if you'd told them Madison would have literally gone from a hoe to a housewife but there she was. Forty-One. Going on ten years of marriage to her surprise soul mate, Fernando, enjoying every minute of blended family bliss. And that wasn't sarcasm! She loved it.

Having grown up in a cold home as pretty much an only child, all she had dreamt of as a little girl was having a big family and she finally had that. Fernando had come along with three live-in children at the time-Victor, Nando and Rosie. She'd brought along Gwen and together they had Serafin who was now in first grade.

On top of the five mentioned above-Fernando had several old children with a few women. Kataleya and Leilani were sixteen and seventeen, Victor's full sisters who lived with their mother and her husband. He also had Hunter who was approaching the age of twenty-one and then his oldest, Xavier, who had been gunned down over some gang shit a few days after he'd turned nineteen. There were also grandchildren, a total of three. Two from Xavier and one from Victor.

Madison also had a grown daughter, Jade, whom she had lost custody of nearly twenty years before while in the depths of active meth addiction. When Jade reached adulthood, she contacted Madison to build a relationship.

To say it wasn't a rough journey to become close would have been a lie. There had been a lot of negative feelings towards Madison with Jade feeling both abandoned and then replaced by Gwen. That hadn't been the case, Madison hadn't wanted to lose Jade but allowed the grief of losing Jade's father to fentanyl and using drugs to escape, to take over and it was determined by the state that she was not a fit mother so Jade was given to her paternal grandmother.

Madison had suggested the two participate in family counseling, worried about saying or doing the wrong thing or making Jade feel like she was invalidating her feelings. Jade had been apprehensive but agreed and while the relationship had its ups and downs, the two were grateful to be in one another's life.

Along with the kids and them, the family lived with Fernando's mother, Gladys. Gladys may have been getting up there in age and slowing down but she was still the biggest chismosa one could ever meet, constantly gossiping about the drama at bingo, what the neighbors were doing, and what was going on in the family. However, she had a good heart and welcomed Madison into the family with open arms, stating her son needed a good woman to keep him fed. And fed? Fernando was fed.

Living with his mother had been a lesson in culinary as Madi had always lived off a diet of nothing, fruity candies, and meth. She couldn't cook worth a shit but there she was preparing five-course Mexican meals for her family and had gotten so skilled that Gladys swore this white girl may have been a better cook than she was.

Knowing how to cook good food had been both a curse and a blessing. Madison had always struggled with the idea of weight gain and kept herself very slim as a young adult, at one point being able to fit in a double-zero, but as a middle-aged woman, she found herself wearing a size sixteen and the occasional eighteen, talk about a mind-funk. She made the joke often that she "put down the spoon and picked up the fork" but often looked at her old photos, missing how pretty she had been when she was young and skinny.

Fernando on the other hand, fucking loved her curvy figure and couldn't keep his hands and comments to himself. He'd been paralyzed from the waist down for over a decade but despite that, was one horny ass fool. Even with him being handicapped, they still had one hell of an intimate life. With him being a paraplegic, it had taken him a long while to relearn how to enjoy sexual pleasure though he'd enthusiastically pleased her.

Madison had been coping with her trauma from a physically and sexually abusive marriage so the low pressure for intimacy had been perfect in her healing. The two had focused more on building a solid foundation before moving to the next level and what resulted was the healthiest and happiest relationship that either of them had been in.