Ice, Ice, Babies!

Let's Get Uncomfortable

Homecoming definitely wasn't the same without my mom. It was great to get all the hugs from my twin sisters and my dad, along with saying hello to Benny and Buster, my mom's believed turtles. Something was different about my sisters though. They had phones.

"And look how cute my case is!" said Anna, showing me her phone case with purple sparkles.

"Mine's better!" said Elsa, holding up her phone case that had gel and little glitter fish in it.

Sadly, my mom was a Disney adult. When Frozen came out, she damn near lost her mind. I think she sang Let it Go every single day. Then, when she found out about her surprise, late-in-life pregnancy at forty-two, she had to give her girls names from the movie. When we found out it was two girls, it was the perfect excuse to name them Anna and Elsa, who went by Annie and Elsie because they ended up not loving Disney so much either.

"I...thought we agreed on no phones until they got into junior high?" I asked my dad.

"Lynn, give them a break. They've been through a lot," he said.

He wasn't the same at all after my mom died. We were all different, but it felt like my dad was someone else entirely. I guess losing your wife and not being able to keep your job of being a traveling ice sculptor will do that to you.

"Look what we found for the parade!" Annie said, running up to me with an old tote bag full of Saint Patrick's Day gear.

There were headbands, necklaces, noisemakers, and all sorts of other stuff. It brought back a lot of memories.

"Oh my gosh, I didn't know we still had all this. Mom thought it got thrown away when we made the spare bedroom into the nursery!" I said, putting a green beaded necklace on.

"Nope. It was buried in the back of her closet, underneath all the other stuff she never threw out," my dad said, chuckling. "She loved to keep a ton of junk."

"It's not junk, Dad. It's a memory. This was all the stuff we used to wear to the parade before the twins were born," I said, putting on a headband with shamrocks on it. "Oh man, it's been ages since I've seen all this stuff."

"We should get going if we want to get a good spot," Elsie said.

"I'm just gonna run to the bathroom first," I said.

I listened to my family groan as I ran down the hall to the bathroom. I noticed that my mom's dusty, decorative Mickey Mouse soaps were gone from the shelf above the toilet, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

Thirty minutes later, we were standing in a crowd of people downtown. I let the girls go in front of me by the rails. I somehow got the tall gene in my family. I was taller than my mom and only shorter than my dad by a few inches.

"Did I tell you guys that my new friend Trevor is going to be on the Anacondas float?" I asked.

"Only about a thousand times," Elsie said.

My dad told me that now, she was smack-dab in the middle of puberty, so her attitude was off the charts lately. I was starting to realize what he meant.

"Well I'm glad you're finally starting to make some more friends in school. Last year you never really left your room," Annie said.

"That was before I met Bethy. You know that," I said to her.

The parade started with some people riding horses and a group of loud bagpipers. But that wasn't the point of the parade. The point of the Oak Falls Saint Patrick's Day Parade was to get as much of the "leprechaun loot" that people in the parade were throwing at you as possible.

My mom, being the expert that she was, always made sure we were at the very end of the parade route, so we'd get the most. It was because they were all trying to empty their bags on the remainder of the crowd. My mom was an avid "parade expert" and always wanted things to be the best of the best. She gave us the idea to use pool skimmers for "extra reach."

With our skimmers out, Annie, Elsie, and I loaded up on whatever was being thrown at us. Our nets were getting full of gold chocolate coins, beaded necklaces, and rainbow marshmallows, which we swiftly put into our backpacks.

"Oh look, here comes the hockey team!" my dad said.

I looked and saw the big snake oh the front of the Anaconda float coming down the street. I started waving my skimmer. Treavor knew to look out for it, and he saw me before I saw him. He came running off the float to us.

"Treavor! You found us!" I said.

"Would you ladies like to ride on the float with us?" he asked my sisters.

"Yeah!" they said in unison, not even asking my dad or giving it a second thought.

"Meet me at the end of the parade route!" Treavor said as he ran off with the girls.

I looked back at my dad as the float was driving away.

"You're not worried about your young daughters riding on a float unattended?" I asked.

He shrugged. "You know the guy. They'll be fine. Let them have fun."

I blinked a few times and returned my attention to the parade. It was weird seeing my little sisters out and about. They were micropremies and my mom practically kept them in bubble wrap. I knew it was only because she cared so much, but sometimes it was just a little, teensy bit...too much.

I relied on my dad to help me out with the pool skimmers so we could keep collecting for Annie and Elsie. Once the last float drove by, everyone started filing out. Meanwhile, we had a big, long walk down to the end of the parade route, which was guarded by security.

I texted Treavor that we were there, and after about fifteen minutes of standing there awkwardly with my dad, Treavor arrived with my sisters. I hoped the move would score him some approval points not only with them, but with my dad.

"Okay, looks like everybody had fun. Let's grab dinner and go home," my dad said, turning to leave. "Nice meeting you, Treavor."

"Wait! There's something you guys need to know," I said, taking Treavor's hand and facing what was left of my family. "Treavor isn't just a new friend of mine. He's my boyfriend."