Secrets 2: Looking Through Different Eyes

After we left the cabin, Devin and I settled into our seats for the trip back to my house.  We had barely made it to the end of the lengthy driveway and reached the county road before my mom started asking questions about our wedding. 

“When you boys get married, are you planning on exchanging rings at the ceremony?”

“Mom, we haven’t even graduated from college yet!  We’ve got plenty of time to think about those things later.  It’s not a decision we need to make now.”

“But you’ve got to start making decisions about the wedding now, because some churches and reception halls are booked up to two years in advance.  You have to start planning these things soon, if you want to ensure getting a specific date.”

“We don’t even know WHERE we’ll be getting married yet, and we’ll have to decide that first, before we can make any other decisions.   We might get married where we end up getting jobs or we might do it here in Jamesville, but we just don’t know yet.  No matter where we decide to get married, I’m sure we’ll be able to find a church, or possibly even a small chapel where we can get married, so you don’t have to worry about that.”  

“But you simply have to get married in a nice church, because then the wedding photos will provide you with wonderful memories when you look at them in the future.”

“No, we don’t have to get married in a church!  And if we decide to get married in Jamesville, we may choose to have the ceremony in the backyard.  That way we won’t need a church and we’ll just have to have someone to give us our vows.  And as far as the reception is concerned, we probably won’t use a fancy banquet hall that we’ll have to book well in advance for the reception.” 

“Then where will you hold the reception?” 

“I’m sure we can find a hall we can use somewhere, like at an Elk’s club or Masonic lodge that we can use.  It doesn’t have to be fancy and we’ll just hire a caterer.”

“Don’t talk so crazy.  You should have a church wedding where you exchange wedding rings followed by a nice reception at a large hall.  Exactly how many people do you plan on inviting anyway?” 

“Ok, we’ll exchange wedding rings, but we don’t know how many we’re going to invite yet.  We may decide to only invite both sets of parents and grandparents, along with Aunt Linda, Uncle Ted, Katy, and Ben.”

“That’s ridiculous.  You mean you aren’t going to invite any of your friends?  What about the guys you went on the canoe trip with?  Don’t you think they might want to help you celebrate your big day?”

“We don’t know if we’ll do that, because we haven’t thought about those things yet.  We might decide to invite them, or possibly just one or two of them.  We may even make some friends where we work and want to invite some of them instead, but there won’t be more than a couple dozen people in attendance, including all of us.  It just depends on where we’re going to have the wedding, and since we don’t know that yet, there’s no sense in speculating about who we’ll invite.”

“You can still do some preliminary planning, like making a tentative guest list, determining what you’re going to wear, and what type of reception you want to have.   Would you prefer a sit-down dinner or a buffet style reception?”

“Mom, the wedding isn’t going to happen for at least another two and a half years.  That’s because we have a year and a half of college left and we want to get settled into our jobs first and work there for a year or so to decide if it’s actually what we want to do for a living.  Once all of that is figured out, THEN we’ll start thinking about getting married.”

“But you don’t even know where you’re going to be getting a job, so why don’t you just start making plans to have the wedding here, in Jamesville?”

“We may not know where we’ll get a job, but we do know where we’ll be applying, and that’s in Texas and California, since those are the states where most of the opportunities will be for what we want to do.”

“You mean you’ll be moving that far away?”

“Yes!  We have to go where the types of jobs that we’re interest in are located, so those are the most likely places where we’ll end up.”

“Then how will I ever get to see my grandchildren?”

“We’re not even married yet and now you’re talking about us having children.  Maybe you and Dad can retire and move closer to where we’re living then.  If you don’t want to do that, then we’ll visit from time to time, like on the holidays, and maybe we can also plan a few summer vacations together.”

“I’ll want to see my grandkids more than just a few times a year!”

“We’ll work something out once we have a child or children.”

“You definitely should have the wedding in Jamesville then, because that would make it easier for both families and your friends from the camping trip so we won’t have to travel so far to be there.”

“But it wouldn’t make much difference for Mac’s grandparents or his Aunt Linda and Uncle Ted’s family.  And we wouldn’t be able to invite any of the friends we make where we work and live either,” Devin answered after noting my exasperation with my mom.  “If I remember correctly, I believe we’ve gone over all of these things before and explained that we’re not ready to make these decisions yet.”

“Ok, maybe you did and I just forgot.   It’s just that this is important to me, and it’s probably the same with your family.  Have you boys even decided which surname you’re going to use once you’re married, since hyphenating both names would be quite cumbersome, especially if you have children?  Can you imagine them having to learn how to write their names using hyphenated surnames when they get to school?”

“We know that hyphenating our names isn’t an option, because MacPherson-McCaskill or McCaskill-MacPherson would be quite a mouthful,” I reluctantly agreed, knowing she wasn’t going to drop this subject.

“Well, what are you going to do then.  Are you just going to keep your names the way they are or are you going to choose one that both of you will use?” 

Even though I knew that Devin and his family had agreed that we’d be better off keeping my surname, I wasn’t about to give in and tell my mom that yet.  If I did, then it would only encourage her to keep up her constant pressure about making wedding plans.  Devin must have noticed that I didn’t want to tell her this, because he answered her instead.

“We don’t believe we should keep our current names as they are, because that would confuse things further.  I mean, if we each father a child would they keep our surname too?  And if they did, wouldn’t it be kind of weird if I and my child had one surname and Mac and his child had a different surname?  That might cause legal issues for us when the kids start school or if they’re ever injured badly enough to need to be in the hospital.”

“I agree.  And how will people even know that you’re even married and not just two single dads and their kids living together?”

“Maybe we’ll just combine our names instead,” I added, fed up with her trying to pressure us to do what she wanted.  “We’ll just use MacCasson or McPherskill for us and our children.”

“Those names sound ridiculous.”

“But it’s an option that we’ve talked about,” I said, hoping she might decide to drop this topic now.

“I think if you did that, then you might offend both families,” Dad chimed in.

“Then maybe we’ll just flip a coin and take the surname of the winner, but like I said, we’ve still got time to work these things out.”

That seemed to end the discussion, since Mom realized that she wasn’t going to force us into making a decision now or allow them to make the decision for us.  Damn, we haven’t even finished our third year of college yet, so what the hell is the rush?  Now, we merely sat in silence and no one said anything for the rest of the ride to the house.

As soon as Dad pulled into the driveway, Devin and I got out of the SUV before my dad had turned off the ignition, and then I used my key to let us in.  We went directly up to my room, and the second the door was closed, Devin asked a question.

“Don’t you think you were being a little harsh with your mom?”

“Maybe, but it’s all your fault.”

“My fault?” he asked while looking at me incredulously. 

“Yes, your fault!  If you hadn’t made such a public spectacle of proposing to me on New Year’s Eve, then she probably wouldn’t be thinking about the wedding yet, at least not as much as she is now.”

“So, you’re upset with me for proposing to you?”

“No, but you could’ve done it in private instead.  Then, we could have kept it a secret until after we graduated.”

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t feel I could wait any longer.  I wanted the whole world to know that I was asking you to be my husband, but maybe I was just being selfish and only thinking about what I wanted.”

“No, and I loved that you did it that way, but I could tell when I looked at my mom’s face afterward that she was already picturing herself with grandkids.  She knows that she won’t have any grandchildren before we’re married, so once you proposed I could tell she was already thinking that the wedding was going to take place soon.  She was probably thinking it was going to happen the following weekend or maybe the next month, but definitely no later than the summer.  That’s because she was planning on how to make it fit into her timeline, not ours.”

“Do you actually believe that she was thinking we would have the wedding over the summer?”

“Absolutely, if not before!  She’d perform the ceremony herself, if she could, because she’s in a hurry to have grandchildren.”  

“My mom wants to have grandchildren as well, but she doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, like your mom.  She’s never even said a word to me about any of this.”

“I think you forgot that my mom is not only older than your mom, but she’s already lost two chances at having grandkids when my brother was killed in Afghanistan and my sister died in an accident.  I’m her last hope and she wants to make sure that she has time to play with the children before she’s physically unable or dies first.”

“Yeah, I keep forgetting that she’s older than my mom.”

“Think about it, because I know you can do the math.  She and my dad were married a couple of years before they had any children and Robbie was ten years older than me.  Mel was eight years older than me as well, and since you’re your parent’s first child and we’re the same age, it means my parents are probably ten to fifteen years older than your parents.”

“Not quite.  Your mom and dad may be that much older than my mom, but they’re not older than my dad.”

“Oh yeah, you’re right.  This time I made the mistake, but it doesn’t change the point I was making.”

“And what point was that?”

“I was talking about how my mom is in a bigger hurry for us to get married since I’m her last chance to have grandchildren.  And because of that, she’s become deliriously and insanely obsessed about which surname we’re going to use for our children.  I didn’t think she’d bring that up until we’d started planning the wedding, but obviously she doesn’t want to wait for that to happen.”

“But we’ve already made the decision about what surname we’re going to use, so why didn’t you just tell her?”

“It’s because that would be like giving her an open invitation to meddle in our lives whenever she wants, and it won’t be just about the wedding.  Next, she’ll be trying to convince us that we can find jobs closer to Jamesville, and if we do that she’ll expect us to live around here, maybe even in your old house.  After that she’ll be trying to determine how soon we’ll have children and how we’ll raise them once they’re born.  Trust me, if I give in to her on these things now it will bring us innumerable hours of mental anguish and emotional torture.”

“But we’re not going to be around her very much while we’re still in college, and then we’ll be leaving to look for jobs.”

“She may not be able to do it in person, but she can constantly call one of our cell phones, since she has both of our numbers.  If we want to avoid that, then we’d either have to block her or keep our phones turned off most of the time.”

“Do you really think she’d do that?”

“She’s already trying to meddle in our wedding plans and pushing us into choosing a surname, and she’s not going to stop there.  She’ll continue trying to run our lives, and eventually she’ll want a say in how we raise our children, and she won’t stop there either.  After that she’ll start meddling in our children’s lives.  It might be about what activities or sports they participate in, what classes they take in school, or where they go to college, and we haven’t even had those children yet.”  

“Ok, but couldn’t you have been a little nicer in how you responded to her?”

“No, I don’t think I could.  I’ve watched her browbeat my dad for years and she always keeps at him until she gets her way.  She tried to do the same thing with my brother and sister as well, and I watched how they rebelled against her efforts.  In fact, I think that was part of the reason for why they both got killed so young.” 

”Why do you say that?”

“She was trying to plan Robby’s life for him and wanted to select the college he went to, what he was going to major in, and what he was going to do to make a living.  You might not know this, but she wanted him to be a doctor so he could take care of her and Dad when he got his medical license.  I think Robbie went to West Point just to spite her and that’s what got him killed.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“And Mel probably wouldn’t have left to go back to college after Mom went to bed on Saturday night if Mom hadn’t been harping on her all day long about one thing or another.  I believe she wanted to avoid a repeat of that happening on Sunday morning, and as a result she ended up getting killed in a head-on crash with a drunk driver.”

“Damn, I didn’t know that either.”  

“Nobody did, except for me and Dad.”

“I don’t remember her being like that with you.”

“When I was younger, she kept hovering over me and trying to make every little decision that affected me.  That’s why you had to stay here most of the time we were together, because she didn’t want to let me out of her sight.  She only let me go to your house once in a while so she wouldn’t make your mom angry or start thinking that she didn’t trust her.”

 “Oh, I always wondered why you didn’t come over to my house very often.”

“It was because she wanted me to be with her all of the time, but then she changed after you moved away.  When she saw that I was totally lost and alone without you, she tried to get me to make other friends.  She wanted me to do things with them, and I think she would have even allowed me to go to their houses or go places with their families, but I didn’t want to do that.  I didn’t get along with any of the other kids like I did with you.  She even tried to bribe me so I’d invite some of them to go bowling or to the movies with us, but I didn’t want to do that either.  Instead, I just worked hard in school, got good grades, and kept to myself.”

“I wasn’t quite that bad, because my dad made sure I didn’t have a lot of time to think about how much I missed you.  He did that by making sure I did my school lessons, since I was being homeschooled, and he also had me focus on my training as a skinwalker.”

“You were lucky, because that would have been much better for me and I would have enjoyed it.  When I became a junior (3^rd) year in high school, Mom tried to get me to select the college that she wanted me to go to.  She wanted me to apply to Colorado State University Pueblo and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, but I didn’t want to do that.  I had a feeling that she was doing this so she and dad could come visit me on the weekends or I could come home to spend time with them.  I decided that I needed to be farther away from her than Pueblo or Colorado Springs, so I told her that if she tried to force me to go to one of those places that I wouldn’t go to college at all and I would look for a job in another state.”

“I’m sorry that our moving away did that to you, but I’m pretty sure I know how you felt, because I missed you as well.  I think that’s why my dad kept me so busy with my schoolwork and training, and why later Gramps and Pops found out where you were going to college, so I could apply there as well.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t an easy time for me, and neither is this.  It may seem that I’m being a little harsh with my mom, but I’m trying to let her know that she’s not going to do the same thing to us that she did to Robbie and Mel.  I still love her, but sometimes I feel that I  have to hit one or both of my parents between the eyes with a 2x4 in order to get their attention.  I’m just doing it verbally, not physically.” 

“I take it that you’re alluding to the old joke about the farmer that trained mules.”

“Yes, I am.  Mom wants us to choose a surname, but if we chose your surname then she’d go ballistic that her SON’s child will have a different surname than her own.”

“But if Mel had children, then they’d probably have had her husband’s surname.” 

“Not if my mom had anything to do with it, but Mel was a girl and it’s considered normal that when a girl gets married that she would either take her husband’s last name or hyphenate their surnames.  But I have a feeling my mom would’ve pressured them into hyphenating their surnames, so our name would be there for when they had children.  However, I’m her son, a male, and I’m expected to carry on the family surname when I get married, especially since hyphenating our surnames isn’t a good option.  What she’s trying to do is to pressure us into selecting the MacPherson surname.”

“But that’s what we’re going to do anyway, so why didn’t you just tell her that.  It would have saved a lot of problems today, because I told you that my family doesn’t have a problem with us doing that.  In fact, my dad, Gramps, and Pops are all considering taking their wife’s surname the next time they get married.  That way if one of us slips up and does something stupid that causes others to find out about our ability, then it won’t be as easy for others to tie us all together, at least not after a couple of generations.” 

It looks as if Devin had forgotten that this was something that I’d mentioned to his dad while we were waiting for him to recover from the accident at the dog park.

“Yes, but I want my mom to know that it was our decision, not hers.  I love my mom dearly, but sometimes she can be a little overbearing, so I want her to know that she’s always welcome to visit our children and our home, but they are our children, not hers.”

“Ok, I’m starting to understand what you’re doing now.”

“And there’s something else I’ve thought about,” I added, and this caused Devin to look at me oddly.  “When we first discussed having children, we planned on each fathering a child so our parents would have a grandchild that they were biologically related to.  But now our situation has changed, since I’m a skinwalker as well and we’re only able to father one male child each.  With that in mind, do you want each of us have our child before my parents and your mother dies, or do we want to have one child now and wait until a future life before we have the other child?” 

“I know both our moms want a grandchild they’re related to by blood, so do you think they might kind of reject whichever child they aren’t blood-related to?”

“I think it depends on the situation.  I don’t think my mom would if we told her we could only have one child, but if we had two children and she was blood-related to one and not the other, then she might favor the one she was biologically related to.” 

“I’m not sure about my mom, but she might react the same way.  So, what are we going to do?”

“We could always tell them that we each gave a sperm sample and told the clinic to use one sample, and if that one didn’t take then they should use the other sample.  However, no matter which sample was used, they were not to tell us whose sample it was.”

“Are you saying that you don’t want to know whose son it really is?  Are you worried that you may treat my son differently, if you knew he wasn’t your son?’

“No, both sons are going to be OUR sons and we’re not going to treat either of them differently.  What I said about the samples is just what we’ll tell our moms, so they won’t end up treating either child differently, but we’ll know which one resulted from our sperm sample.”

“And what if we decide to have both of our children during this marriage?”

“Then we’ll just tell our moms that the first sample took, so when we were ready to have our second child the clinic just used the other sample.  Therefore, we each fathered a child, but we don’t know which one is biologically ours.  Hopefully, that way they’ll treat them both the same, because they can’t be sure which one is biologically related to them.”

“Clever.  But don’t you think they might just choose a favorite if they think one resembles you or me more?”

“Yes, that’s always a possibility, but I’m hoping by that time they’ve already fallen in love with both of them and it won’t make any difference if they’re blood-related or not.”

“Ok, then that’s what we’ll do, but now we have to consider the boys,” Devin pointed out.  “Do we allow them to grow up as an only child or do we let them grow up as brothers?”

“Personally, I think they should grow up as brothers, but without too much of a gap between their ages.  I mean, I loved Robbie, but we were never really close because of the big difference in our ages.  He always treated me great, but we had our own set of friends and things we liked to do at the time, and there was no overlap.  Some of it was due to the age difference, and some of it was due to who we were and what we enjoyed.  I didn’t really care for macho guy things, but Robby did.  I just liked different things that didn’t appeal to him.  It was basically the same with Mel and me, and in addition to the big age difference, some of it also had to do with the gender factor. 

“I agree about our sons having a brother and that they should be close in age, and that’s probably because I was an only child.  For a few years you were like my brother, since we were together most of the time, at least until my family moved away.  However, I have to admit that sometimes being an only child was good, though, because I got all of the attention, but I wished I had a brother once you and I were no longer together.  I suggest we have the boys a year or two apart and allow them to grow up together, but that means we’ll be childless when we take on our new identities.”

“Not necessarily.  We can always adopt or use a sperm donor to impregnate a surrogate.” 

“Yeah, we could do either of those things, but I’ve heard it’s kind of difficult to adopt babies,” Devin pointed out.  “There are a lot of couples that want a baby, but there aren’t enough babies being put up for adoption to meet the demand, so there’s a long waiting list to adopt one.”

“It’s not only that there aren’t enough babies, but in some cases it’s that the race of the babies available aren’t what’s wanted by the couples adopting.”

“I hadn’t considered that, but you’re probably right,” Devin agreed.  “If we don’t choose to use a sperm donor and a surrogate, then we can always adopt a slightly older child so we don’t have to go through the diaper and toddler phases again.” 

“Good point!  I’m sure we’ll be ok with doing those things when our boys are younger, but we might not want to go through it again later, at least if we don’t have to.”  

“Instead, we could try to adopt a child that’s between three to five years old, or we could adopt multiple children of different ages, so there’s only a year or two gap between them and the next older child.”

“I agree that we should start with a child that’s five or younger, since they’re more likely to be ok with our ability.  That’s because it will be similar to things they see happen in cartoons, superhero movies, or on TV shows that they watch.”  I offered that last part since Devin had never watched much TV while he was growing up. 

“That’s actually a good idea, because it might be more difficult to judge how an older child might react to our ability.  We’ll just have to impress upon them that they’ll have to keep our ability a secret.”

“Yes, keeping our ability a secret is crucial.  Then as they get older, we can take the time to elaborate on the reasons why they can’t let others know that we can do these things.”

 “Yes, I agree.  My mom was never comfortable with my dad’s ability and she freaked out when she realized the ability hadn’t skipped over me and I could do the same things he did.  She’s never been very comfortable with any of this until recently, and you played a big part in that.”

“It’s only because I could understand how she felt, since I hadn’t gone through the ceremony yet.”

“Then maybe you could use the same logic to convince an older child, if we adopted one.”

“I think that would depend on how he or she was raised,” I offered.  “If they’d been brought up to believe in monsters and fear them, then it might be difficult for me, or anyone else, to convince them that our ability didn’t make us monsters.”

“That’s probably true, but maybe we could just ask them certain types of questions first, to see how they react.  We could ask them if they’d ever seen a superhero or transformer movie, or possibly one of the Harry Potter or Twilight movies, and ask what they thought about them.” 

“Yes, that might work.  We could also ask them how they would feel if they knew the sorts of things they saw in those movies could actually happen or how they’d react if they knew someone could change into different people or animals.  If they think that would be neat or cool, we could probably take a chance and adopt them, and once they’re ours we could show them what we can do and how we can use our ability to protect them.  If they don’t react positively, then we could look for another child.”

“That might be a workable idea,” Devin agreed, “so let’s keep that information in the back of our minds until it’s needed.”

“If we’d talked about this sooner, I could’ve saved my sperm before I became a skinwalker, and then we could’ve used that now and had as many children as we wanted.  That way we wouldn’t have to worry about having an only child, and then we could have fathered our skinwalker sons in our next life, and neither of them wouldn’t have been an only child either.” 

“Yes, in hindsight that would have been the wisest thing to do.”

When we went downstairs, I apologized to my mom for being so sharp with her earlier.  I also explained that Devin and I will make those decisions when the time is right, and then we’ll let her and Dad know what we’ve decided.  She listened to what I had to say and it seemed to help, because we had an enjoyable rest of the day togethers. 

However, now that she had us thinking about these things, it was apparently still on our minds as we were falling asleep, at least that was the case with me. 

Mom made breakfast for us shortly after we woke up, and when we’d finished eating, we all remained at the table and chatted for a while longer. 

“We really enjoyed spending the week with you guys,” I stated, “and we’re glad you went out to the cabin with us and spent some time there”   

“I’m glad we did that as well,” Mom replied, “because now I see why you enjoy spending so much time at the cabin with Devin and his parents.  It’s very peaceful and gorgeous out there, but I’m not sure that I’d be able to deal with the wildlife the way you and Devin do.”

“I agree that spending a short time at the cabin is nice,” Dad agreed, “but if I lived out there I’d miss watching the football and basketball games on TV, since they don’t have any reception or cable.”

“Oh, he’d be ok with it if he and Aaron could drive somewhere to watch the games so they could bet on them,” Mom responded, and Dad looked at her in surprise.  “Yes, I knew that you two had been betting on those games,” she added smugly.

“We never bet very much, just enough to make the games more interesting,” Dad replied. 

“If the games aren’t interesting unless you’re betting on them, then why do you watch the games at home when you’re by yourself?”

“I said that betting makes the games MORE interesting.  They’re still interesting without the betting as well.”

“Then maybe you should limit your enjoyment to the games without the betting.”

After we finished chatting, Devin and I went up to my room to get our things together so we could get ready to drive back to campus, and after we brought everything downstairs, we sat in the living room and chatted with my parents a little longer.

“We’re both going to come back here as soon as we take our final exams, and then we’ll spend a week with you before we go to the cabin.  We’ll only have a few days there, though, because we’ll be leaving with Gramps and Pops to fly back to Arkansas, and then we’ll be with them for the month of June.  Don’t worry, we’ll be back here in time to celebrate the Fourth of July with all of you, though, and then we’ll spend some time at the cabin with Ma and Pa before we return to go on vacation with you.”

“We both look forward to spending more time with you boys,” Mom said after I finished speaking. 

“And I’m hoping I can find something to do with you two that you’ll enjoy while you’re here during the week in May,” Dad added. 

“We look forward to that,” I replied, and then we both gave my mom a hug and a kiss on the cheek before my dad gave each of us a fist bump.  We then picked up our gear and carried it outside, but Dad had to let us get our duffles out of the back of SUV first, because we’d left them there when we got back from the cabin. 

Once we had those things, Dad had to back out of the driveway so Devin could pull his SUV out of the garage, and once he and Dad had switched places, we began to load all of our stuff into Devin’s SUV.  After that was taken care of, we said goodbye to my parents one more time before we climbed into our seats and drove away. 

When we reached Fort Collins, we grabbed a quick bite to eat before we unloaded the SUV, and then we got our things ready for classes to resume the following day. 

“Are you going to take me to the dog park in the morning?” Devin asked as we were getting ready for bed. 

“Yes, I know how much you like doing that and how you’ve missed it while we were with my parents.”

“Thanks.  I really appreciate that.”

We got up early the next morning and headed over to the dog park.   As usual, Preston and Bailey were already there.  They were apparently thrilled to see us again, but I could tell that Preston was already fretting about how he was going to deal with Bailey over the summer break.  Shortly after Bailey and Bear began racing around, he told me that Bailey had been miserable for most of the time we were gone.

“She started getting moody as soon as she realized she wouldn’t be seeing Bear on a daily basis and it’s continued until she saw the two of you getting out of the SUV.  I know the same thing is going to happen over summer break as well, and she’ll probably be even worse when you’re gone for a couple of months.”

“You mean she still doesn’t like to interact with the other dogs when we’re not here?”

“She might run around with them for a short time, but then she’d come over and lay down at my feet and stare at the gate as she looked for your SUV to pull up and for Bear to get out of the back.  In fact, when a similar SUV pulled into the parking lot one day, as soon as she saw it her ears perked up and she rose to her feet, but then the SUV kept going and drove to the other end of the park. When that happened, she laid down again, totally depressed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that and I also regret that I have to bring this up, but I may not be able to bring Bear to the dog park on a daily basis when we return in the fall either.  I’ll be a senior in the fall and the courses have been getting more difficult every semester, which means I have to spend more time studying.  What I’m trying to say is that I may only be able to bring Bear here two or three times a week.”

Devin and I had already agreed to this, since our courses were going to require more from us during our final year.  We are also hoping to raise our GPA’s during our senior year so we’ll be able to graduate with honors. 

“Won’t that be rough on Bear as well?” Preston asked, hoping to change my mind.

“Yes, but my roommate said he’ll try to bring Bear here on the other days, but he’ll only be able to do it in the late afternoon or early evening.  His schedule doesn’t allow him to do it early in the morning, like I do.”

“That’s a shame, because it means we won’t be here when they show up.  I hold study groups in the evening and I’ve already been advised that I’m going to be scheduled to teach classes in the afternoon next year.”

“That’s too bad, so I hope Bailey is able to find another dog that she likes as much as she does Bear and they can play together whenever we’re not here.”

“Yes, I hope that as well.  Otherwise, she’ll be impossible to live with on those days.”  

Now that I’d advised Preston that I wouldn’t be bringing Bear to the dog park every day in the fall, Devin and I were able to enjoy going to the dog park every morning.  Preston and Bailey were always happy to see us as well, and even though Bailey wasn’t aware that this was going to end soon, she and Bear continued to enjoy our visits while they lasted. 

The days continued to be fairly normal for the next few weeks, but then it was time to start studying for finals.  I’ll admit that it wasn’t always easy, because Devin and I each had one day where we had one exam scheduled in the morning and another exam that same afternoon.  This made it more difficult to prepare for each exam, but we both felt that we still did ok on those finals.  The other days weren’t as bad, since we had the entire night before the exam to cram for it, and overall we felt we’d retained enough of the material that we needed to know for each of those exams. 

As soon as our last final ended, we raced back to the house and packed up our belongings so we could leave for Jamesville in the morning.  Once that was taken care of, we showered and changed into something a little nicer so we could go out for a celebratory supper at Dominick’s.  Yes, we were splurging, but after the rough week we’d just gone through, we felt we’d earned it.

When we returned to the house after having a wonderful meal, we loaded everything into Devin’s SUV for the drive home.  We are both going to spend Friday night and the following week with my family, and then on Sunday we’ll leave to spend a few days with Ma and Pa before heading out with Gramps and Pops.  If we’re lucky, this year we’ll find the treasure that we were looking for when we were in the Ozarks the previous summer. 

We eventually turned in early that night so we’d be well rested the next morning for the drive back to my house.  Summer vacation had officially begun!