DECEMBER, 1994, SEATTLE, WA
"I CAN'T EVEN walk away for a second, can I?" Lindy called over her shoulder through a soft chuckle, a sound that could barely be heard over Charlie's increasing whimpers as he lost sight of his mother. Although he was quite safe strapped into his swinging bassinet, complete with lullaby music that tinkled overhead, the main problem was that Lindy was not directly in his line of sight. And when she wasn't, it usually led to the typical bouts of crying.
"I'm here, I'm here," Lindy chanted, turning a corner out of her kitchen and walking back into the living room where Charlie's pinched face, splotchy red from his high pitched keening, began to settle when he saw his mother.
It was something extraordinary, perhaps even more so than that one word, to be that loved by another human being. Lindy knew adoration well from Kurt, but the obvious love that her son already had for her made her feel almost weak with the weight of such joy.
Every bleak memory of her past had been easily soldered away by her present. She never once had thought that she'd make a spectacular mother, but now, she couldn't imagine life without Charlie in it. It made her anxious to think that years ago, she had been unable to envision a child as perfect as him in her life. And above the fact that he was hers in flesh and blood, he was also a product of Kurt. This alone fascinated her to no end, swelling her love for Charlie with each daily reminder that the boy from Krist Novoselic's garage had become the father of her child.
Life was different now. It was no longer a long haul, but a gift that was to be enjoyed with every second that ticked by much too quickly. Lindy wanted more than anything to freeze time as it stood right then, just so she could at least evaluate her life from another perspective and make sure that it was truly hers to live.
Not even the ever-present cloud of Kurt's Nirvana fame could have harmed the ideal heaven that Lindy lived in. His fans, along with the rest of the world, may have known her name and that she was Kurt's new mate, but it seemed that shadowing themselves from the spotlight had been an easier task than they'd thought. Or maybe it was just the mere fact that they were both recluses, content to spend each day hidden in their home with Charlie and Frances to keep them company.
Lindy was on maternity leave from the hospital, allowing her much time to enjoy both Charlie and Frances while exploring the early stages of motherhood. Kurt helped plenty, but he too had his distractions from the outside world, most of which came from his tiny little music room upstairs that was cluttered with instruments.
Together, Kurt and Lindy had busied themselves with another to-do — decorating Charlie's nursery room. Instead of a typical bright blue, baby boy theme, Lindy had suggested Kurt and Frances tackle the white walls with their own art. Sure enough, both father and daughter complied, and Charlie's room was now a mural of colors that recalled images of a deep ocean. That must have been what Kurt was going for anyways when he had added the seahorses in; lines and lines of them, all colorfully dancing their way across Charlie's walls.
There was now a routine too, something that Lindy had once scoffed at when she'd been younger. But nowadays, she liked the rhythmic flow of her world. She liked waking up to Charlie, dancing barefoot around the house with him in her arms and listening to Kurt pluck at guitar strings and produce the kind of music that would belong to him and him alone.
She and Kurt's buoyant moods had even allowed for improved relationships with both Kurt's mother and father. While Wendy frequently made her rounds at the house to visit her grandchildren, Don Cobain had begun the tentative process of trying to re-enter his son's life and get to know him again.
