open post.

[jowls]

Leave prompts, you'll get nonsense.

Comments

[rockitlike]

[ Whatever they call her, their daughter will be in part a Scully; being surrounded by ghosts is pretty much a given. It is, she thinks, the best way through a difficult problem. Better to stick to the facts, even when they're hard ones, than to hide the broken branches of the family tree. ]

Tasteful, matching frames might be the strangest part of all of this for us.

[jowls]

[ The strange thing about fatherhood, now that he can experience it as anything besides the random strike of a lightning bolt, is the way it calls to mind everything rotten about his own youth. What they're doing isn't what his father would have done - or his mother, for that matter. And maybe that's where that instinctive worry comes from, their insistence on repressing talk of his sister, rather than letting her loss live in the open. What if they were right? What if he screws up the only kid they have left?

(What if there is no right, and he's going to screw the kid up either way?) ]

I can get something tacky to clash with the rest of them.
Maybe an American flag printed one? I bet they have those at the dollar store.

[rockitlike]

I don't have an emoji for a full-body shudder.

[jowls]

What's wrong, Scully? You don't want some good old-fashioned patriotism in the living room?
That's where we'll put the pregnancy photos with the gauzy scarves.

[rockitlike]

We'll need a bald eagle for the shoot, then.

[jowls]

I'll requisition one from the Bureau.

[rockitlike]

You're really leaning into the nesting instinct. I like it.

[jowls]

Maybe I just want to see you with a raptor perched on your fist.

[rockitlike]

Do you know how big those birds are?

[jowls]

Simultaneously bigger than you'd think and smaller than you'd hope.

[rockitlike]

Too big to be a two-hander for me, even.

[jowls]

Then it'll just have to be an inexplicable American flag picture frame.
Maybe I can find one with a Bible verse painted on it.

[rockitlike]

Why would you put that in our home when you have to look at it too?

[jowls]

To be completely honest, I'd probably keep it just long enough to see the look on your face.

Now, the Roswell picture frame, that's going to be a family heirloom.

[rockitlike]

You're impossible.

[jowls]

You love it.

[rockitlike]

I do.

[jowls]

[ Give it another hour, and he'll have another photo for her - this one of the ugliest frame he could find at the thrift store sitting on a bookshelf, a photo of the two of them in it. ]

Couldn't find an American flag one.

[rockitlike]

[ It's awful, and for reasons she can't totally comprehend, she's so touched by it she can't breathe for a moment. They're keeping it forever. ]

We can do a pregnancy shoot if you really want to. No live animals, no pyrotechnics.

[jowls]

Do you want a pregnancy shoot?

[rockitlike]

For myself? No. I think they're silly and usually a little tacky.

But... would it be good to have that? So she grows up seeing us right now, like this-- waiting to meet her?

[jowls]

That's the thing: I don't really want one, either. If we're going to go that far, we might as well go get glamour shots done and call it a day.

We take pictures sometimes already. We could print them off the cloud.

[rockitlike]

I think I like that better.

I just want her to know how wanted she is.

[jowls]

We're going to tell her every single day.

Do people still make scrapbooks? I haven't seen any on mommy blogs.

[rockitlike]

I have no idea. Maybe you can bring it back, you're a trend-setter.