Work Text:
they didn't have you where I come from
never knew the best was yet to come
life began when I saw your face
and I hear your laugh like a serenade
/\/\/\
Cynthia never pictured herself as a stay-at-home mom. It wasn’t anything she despised or feared, it just wasn’t the future she saw for herself. She was always interested in art, specifically watercolor illustration. She always hoped she’d be a children’s book illustrator. Wouldn’t it be noble to be someone responsible for a child’s happiness?
But things never seem to go as planned.
She met Larry Murphy and fell hopelessly in love. She always fell so easily. Emotions got the best of her. They took their time to get married, took their time to have kids—and struggled a lot having kids. Cynthia put her life on hold to build the family they were trying so desperately to have. Then, she had Connor. Zoe arrived not long after.
After having her two perfect children, there was nowhere she wanted to be that didn’t have them. And she was happy with that. Larry went to work. She stayed home with the kids. It screamed “Traditional Nuclear Family.” Everything had an order and routine.
Summer was always Cynthia’s favorite season. Spring allergies calmed down, all the snow finally melted away, and rain was few and far between. It was the perfect season to be outside with her children, spending hours in the sun with not a responsibility in sight. (Except maybe sunscreen. Where Zoe tanned and freckled, Connor was an awfully pale child that did nothing but burn.)
“I don’t want sunscreen!” the four year old whined, trying to pull away from Cynthia’s grip. Unfortunately, she had a grip as strong as steel.
“Do you want to be covered in the green goop later?” Cynthia threatened. The “green goop” in question was aloe vera gel, but of course a four year old isn’t going to care about proper nomenclature.
“No! I don’t want it!”
“Then you’re putting sunscreen on! Zoe has hers on.”
The rowdy little boy stopped squirming, falling in a heap on the floor. This only made it harder to put sunscreen on him, but at least he wasn’t actively fighting her. He whined into the hardwood floor he laid face down on. She just lathered him up, smiling to herself at the angry toddler before her.
He wouldn’t be a toddler for much longer. He only turned four just a few months ago, back in April. In a year or so he’d be off to kindergarten.
He wanted a Spiderman backpack.
“All done!” Cynthia practically sang. “That wasn’t painful, right?”
“It’s sticky!” Connor whined. “I don’t like sticky.”
“Oh, you’ll get used to it… I have a surprise!”
“Popsicles!?” Zoe squealed. Her hair that had been braided so perfectly just ten minutes okay was already flying in all directions, wild and frizzy.
“No, but that’s a good guess… I got new sidewalk chalk!”
She led the toddlers out to the front yard, the chalk waiting on the front step. Fifty vibrant colors sat unopened with pristine points. Before Cynthia could open them, Connor snatched up the package and ran to the driveway. Zoe stamped her feet into the ground, grumbling to herself,
“Stupid!” she growled, stomping her feet harder.
“Don’t say that,” Cynthia warned, but she couldn’t be stern and watched as Zoe scuffed her new sandals.
“I wanted popsicles.”
At the end on the driveway, Connor struggled to open the chalk package, pulling at the shrink-wrapped plastic with his teeth. Zoe calmed down quickly, joining her brother, but not helping much. Cynthia finally came to the rescue with strong, manicured nails to tear through the package, freeing the colors. Each Murphy snatched up a color.
Connor grabbed purple.
Zoe grabbed indigo.
Cynthia grabbed orange.
“I got purple, too!” Zoe shouted, shoving the chalk in Connor’s face.
“No, that’s not purple!” Connor argued. “I learned in preschool that there are seven colors in the rainbow. That’s—” he counts each color on his fingers—"red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet… That’s indigo!”
“In-dee-GO!” Zoe shouts.
“You’re three, Zoe. You don’t know colors like I do.”
“I know colors, Connor! Stupid!”
She immediately started grinding the indigo chalk in the driveway, big scribbles forming as dust flew everywhere. Cynthia was already halfway done drawing a little pumpkin. Connor just stared at his piece of chalk.
“Pumpkins are for Halloween,” he mumbled.
“I know, but I like them! What are you going to draw?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can draw grapes, to go with my pumpkin.”
“No.”
“Okay, how about you draw… a flower?”
“No.”
“You aren’t making this easy.”
“I’m going to draw myself.”
Well, at least that problem was solved quickly. Cynthia smiles, returning to the pumpkin patch she was drawing, filling the pumpkin with patterns and zentangles. Next to her, Connor held his purple chalk in a tight death grip, eyebrows furrowed so much you could barely see his eyes. He draws out a circle, adds two big ears, then loops floppy hair on top of it, coloring it in solid.
His hair had gotten shaggy once again. Larry always preferred a shorter cut on his son, but Connor liked his curls and Cynthia just couldn’t say no to her baby. So, he’d always get a few weeks with his shaggy hair before Larry would sit him in the backyard and buzz him clean once again. Connor’s haircuts became their own routine cycle in the Murphy household. No matter how expected the haircuts were, Connor still hated them.
He continued his drawing, adding two little dots for eyes, a bumpy nose, and a frown. He stopped, analyzed it with a blank face, then wrote his name under it as neatly as a four year-old can (which isn’t very neat). Cynthia studied the doodle.
“Why do you look so sad?” she asked, moving to sit next to him. “Why not draw a smile?”
“Because I am sad,” he mumbled a response, hugging his knees to his chest.
“Why?”
“I won’t have any friends in kindergarten.”
She scooped him into her arms, petting at his soft brown curls. She whispered to him, “That’s not true—you’ll have all your friends from preschool.”
“I don’t have friends in preschool anymore.”
“Connor…”
“It’s true! I pulled Alana Beck’s hair and now they hate me and I have no friends! Her hair was just so curly…”
“Well, you can’t pull peoples’ hair, but I’m sure they don’t hate you.”
“I’m your friend, Connor!” Zoe yelled right next to Cynthia’s ear. There’s indigo chalk smeared on her face. The chalk in her hand has obvious chew marks.
“Shut up, Zoe!” Connor yelled. Tears trailed his cheeks. They weren’t there a second ago.
“Stupid, Connor! Stupid!” Zoe had a new favorite word.
“You’re stupid!” Connor reached out and snatched her braid, yanking her down onto the concrete driveway. The little girl screamed in her brother’s grip. Her cheek contacted the ground, a sizable scrape appearing on her face.
“Connor Bailey Murphy!” Cynthia shouted, yanking both children into her arms. Indigo and purple pieces of chalk fall to the ground, both breaking into several shattered pieces. You know better than that!”
Connor was crying harder now, harder than Zoe as she held her scraped cheek delicately. The chalk was left on the driveway. Cynthia ran her kids inside. Connor sat with his nose in the corner. Zoe sat on the couch with a cold wet rag on her cheek. Cynthia stepped out of the room, taking a moment for herself.
“You’re still my friend,” Zoe said swinging her feet absentmindedly. “But you’re not nice.”
“I know,” Connor snapped, not looking away from the corner.
Silence for several moments. The only sound was the rhythmic pat of Zoe’s heal on the couch. Cynthia returned.
“Zoe, baby, are you okay?” she asked, her voice tired and heavy. It wasn’t even 2 p.m. yet.
“I wanna go outside,” Zoe answered, all the pain gone from her voice.
“I think we’re done with outside for today.”
“I wanna go outside!” Zoe shouted it this time. Not yet angry, but definitely belligerent. “Connor wants to go outside!”
“Connor is in time out, baby—”
“No!” Zoe jumped off the couch and ran to the front door. Too smart for her own good, she unlocked it and stumbled outside. Cynthia Murphy no longer had any say over her children.
“Do you want to go outside, Connor?”
Connor looked up at his mother, his cheeks red and puffy from tears still leaking from his eyes. He slowly nodded, pushing himself up to his feet. Next thing Cynthia knew, he had wrapped around her legs with the force of a boa constrictor. His harder sobs had returned as he cried into her thighs.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I just get so angry. I’m not stupid!”
“Connor, sweetheart,” Cynthia soothed, “you aren’t stupid. Zoe is only three. She’s still learning about how some words aren’t okay.”
“Why can’t she be four and know words?”
Cynthia laughed, once again taking her son in her arms. Zoe was already on the driveway destroying more pieces of chalk as she made a dusty mess of scribbles and squiggles. Cynthia placed Connor next to her, praying to herself they wouldn’t jump at each other. To her surprise, Zoe handed Connor a piece of chalk, yellow.
“I wanna draw stars!” she announced to Connor. Well, it was more of a demand.
“I’m not good at stars,” Connor grumbled.
“Yes, you are! Show me.”
Connor huffed, but leaned over to draw a star. It was wobbly and fat, but he did it without lifting his hand, just like his mother showed him. Zoe watched the entire thing, made him draw five more, and then finally tried it herself. The outcome wasn’t a star and more of a space disaster, but she tried her best. Connor let her experiment with stars while he crawled over to his mom, who was back working on her pumpkins.
“Can you show me how to draw something?” he asked her, avoiding eye contact. Cynthia looked up from her pumpkins to her shy little son.
“What do you want to draw?” she asked, ruffling his curly hair. He smiled.
“Spongebob!”
“Okay, let’s see…”
She collected all the colors, yellow, blue, black, brown, red. She even grabbed green for his holes, but Connor tried to stop her, insisting Spongebob had no green on his body. Cynthia just bopped him on the nose and went to work. She worked slowly, speaking every step as she went. She drew a wavy rectangle, but with a straight bottom where his shirt went. She drew his pants, then his legs and arms. Then she drew his face, big blue eyes with six eyelashes total and a long nose (that could be played like a flute). She finished filling in the details, adding his holes and making sure the stripes on his socks were just right. As soon as she was done, Connor snatched up all her colors and immediately started drawing his own Spongebob.
He drew all the time, but he always got so frustrated, tearing out the pages of coloring books and crying because he wasn’t “good enough.” But as he drew Spongebob and followed Cynthia’s instructions, he smiled and laughed, giggling at his mistakes and embracing his thick and jerky lines. Connor was a good kid and was an angel of a baby, he just held himself to standards she didn’t believe a toddler could even have.
Sometimes she worried if she or Larry were the ones that put those standards and expectations in him.
She waved away that thought, enjoying a peaceful moment as her son enjoyed himself and drew with every ounce of his being. Even Zoe tried to draw Spongebob, but with bright read and blue chalk. Picasso’s rendition of Spongebob, one might say.
Wouldn’t it be noble to be someone responsible for a child’s happiness?
Cynthia only hoped she could keep her children as happy as they were now forever.
/\/\/\
How long do you want to be loved
Is forever enough, is forever enough
How long do you want to be loved
Is forever enough