There was a great deal of cheering and excitement. It was now, after a whole year of waiting, 2025.
Also this year Babsie’s cousin Lyle, his wife Karen, their daughter Lane and her sons Chad and Brad had come up to visit. Lyle’s sons Keith and Ross would have come up also, but both were busy with work, Uni and other such pursuits.
“Well, I suppose now the fire works are over, it’s time for everyone to go to bed,” Lyle yawned.
“As you can see, time lag is still taking its toll on Lyle,” Babsie grinned.
“Well, I’m still perfectly awake,” Karen commented.
“As am I,” Babsie agreed.
“That’s nice for you,” Nick said. “I’m going to bed.”
Babsie stared.
“What? It’s not even two o’clock yet! Who are you and what have you done with Nick?”
Nick gave her a tired smile.
“Things change Babsie,” he replied, and he headed off to his room.
“We should still get the kids to bed, Babsie,” Isaac said.
“True. All right you lot! Off to bed!”
There was a chorus of “aww’s” and yawns that greeted them. Nonetheless, before the hour was over, all the kids were in bed.
However, Babsie and Karen were both still wide awake, even when everyone else had gone to bed. So the two women made hot chocolates and located the shelves in the library where the photo albums were kept.
“And this is Rogue and Storm’s fifth birthday. Oh look, Xavier’s pulling faces in the background.”
“He is such a rascal, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is,” Babsie agreed.
“Takes after his mother I hear?”
“Yes, he does. Rather scary thought actually.”
Karen giggled.
“You know, he’s gonna be a daddy again sometime next month. How scary is that?”
“I always thought that was a funny way of putting it,” Karen mused. “A daddy again. When did he stop being a daddy?”
Babsie laughed.
“That’s a good point.”
“Think he’ll have a lot of kids too?”
“I honestly don’t know. I think he wants a few kids, but I don’t think he wants a huge number. Although, at any rate, it’s really up to Electra. But at the moment, he doesn’t have a huge lot of choice – she’s expecting multiples. I’m not sure how many though.”
“Don’t you people have enough kids?” Karen laughed. “And Electra? Strange name.”
“Well, it’s her pen name, but she’s managed to get most of her friends to call her that. I think it’s only really family that calls her ‘Connie’ now, and I know at one point she was seriously considering changing her name to Electra.”
“I don’t think I would ever change my name. And certainly not to something so…”
“Weird?”
“Well, yes. I don’t understand at all why you’ve named your kids the things you have.”
“Well, Ike and I aren’t complete monsters, all our kids have one ‘normal’ name, or a way to normalise their name, if they decide they don’t like their ‘weird’ name. But for the most part, all of them have been happy with their names. The only one who has opted to go by something else has been Cosmo – he didn’t like being called Sean.”
“You’re kidding? He chose the – the weird one?”
“I guess we’re just a weird family,” Babsie smiled.
“They don’t get teased a lot at school?”
“Well, yes and no. But they get teased by each other too, and they have a completely unconventional mother who knows exactly what it’s like to gets teased at school to give them… interesting but effective advice on how to deal with it.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, like when they start calling you names just to sit there and stare at them with a huge smile on your face. Then, when they’re kinda done and waiting for a reaction to say something really odd like ‘I’m wearing new socks’ or ‘I hear voices, and they don’t like you’.”
Karen giggled.
“No way?”
“Yeah way. If you do it right, you can get some beautiful reactions.”