Robin; Kids at 19

15

15

It’s two months later. I refrained form telling anyone about my suspicions, which I was sure, were true. I tried to push the whole incident from my mind, as life was so busy all the time. Alayna and I were both spending a lot of time with the children and each other and it made a nice life. El was trying to plan the wedding in between being with the children and I can tell I didn’t really help because I was too relaxed about the whole idea that I didn’t mind what she did for the big day. The one thing that I did put forward though was that it should have a civil ceremony because neither of us believed in God and surely it would be an insult to him to marry in his name but to not believe?

She agreed with me and started to work around it.

“So the colour theme is going to be gold and ivory and we can have like, lanterns draped in gold and ivory fabric all in the reception hall. What do you think about balloons? Maybe the ones that don’t shine and have that matt finish.

I think that would be nice. I don’t think they should be the centerpieces because they obstruct too much I think. But we can have flowers in the middle of the tables. I was thinking maybe orange stargazer lilies. And they could be standing in like, glass vases with ivory sheened pebbles. Oh that would be adorable, wouldn’t it?” She asks me indirectly sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked under her and a pen and paper on her lap.

“Yah!” Imogen squeals in response and stuffs her fist in her mouth. I was sitting on the floor with Nate sitting between my ankles and I was holding Imogen under the armpits so she could stand. She frog kicked her legs and squealed happily as I pulled a silly face at her and she smiled with delight in response, drooling a little in the process.

“I agree Immy.” El replies. “What do you want to ware poppet? Like gold with an ivory sash or ivory with a gold sash?”

“Ahh, naa!”

“Yeah, I think so too. It might be too much gold otherwise. And you can match me too! And we can put your brother in ivory with a gold waistcoat I think.”

“What about having like flowers woven together and it makes like bunting all around the edge of the room and it can hang in places?”

“Oh that would be adorable! It could emerge from similar vases that are in the middle of the tables and…” she is cut off by her phone starting to ring from the other side of the room. Nate shuffles closer to me and I hold out my hand for him to hold on to. He pulls my fingers towards him at starts to inspect my nails with intense curiosity.

“SHUT THE FRONT DOOR! NO! Oh my gosh darling!’ El starts to exclaim from across the room. She turns to stare at me with wide mouth shock as she continues to listen to whoever is on the phone.

“Oh my sweetheart! What are you going to do?”

Nate lets go of my hand, looses balance and falls back against my leg; his dark curls bouncing upon impact.

Are you okay? I sign to him and he nods his head. Even though he was only five months old Nate, and even Imogen to some length were much more quick on the uptake with sign language that they were with spoken language. It was a weirdly curious thing but if El or I taught them a hand motion for juice, five minutes late they would pester us for juice constantly. And more often than not they would remember what the signs were and then come back to us the next day and start asking about juice again. And yet it was only about a week ago that Imogen said her first word – ‘Ma-mah’ and Nate still hadn’t caught on to babbling yet.

“I’m not surprised! I’m so sorry darling. Have you spoke to your mam yet? What did she say? Can you stay there?”

“Ah aha!” Imogen calls and bends her knees to sit. She turns to Nate takes ahold of his hand and puts it in her mouth. He starts to cry after a moment.  I remove his hand from her grip.