This choice: an unbuilt scrapbook—"Look how big I got after Haley..." April bemoans... • Go Back... It had taken some talking-into to get Tara to spend her afternoon on the bed in her mother's new She Shed rather than watching some docu-series she'd already seen before, but it wasn't like they weren't having fun.
April had conceded and allowed Tara to put on her show in the She Shed. If it had been up to her she would have much rather watched Friends, but April was an Investigative Discovery addict before they cut cable anyway. Tara had brought in a big box full of photos that Haley of all people had been holding onto in her bedroom, and she'd gone out and gotten her mom a nice scrapbook to put a lot of them in. Combining what Haley had been hiding under everyone's noses and what April had squirreled away, they had been able to put together some fun memories.
"Oh no, you're... not allowed to see this one."
"You cannot say that to me and expect me not to want to see it."
"I'm serious, this one's off limits."
Tara leaned over and tried to snatch the old photo from her mother's hands, but April was quicker than she looked. Despite having a good sixty pounds on her daughter these days, April had been a mom for long enough to anticipate her daughters' moves. And despite Tara's time away from home, there wasn't much that she could do except—
"Hey mom, is that the oven alarm?"
"It shouldn't be, dinner won't be ready until—"
"Yoink."
Tara was quick on her feet these days. With her new position, she'd been feeling her Wheaties even with the long hours out of the house. Meanwhile April had spent every morning since she moved in cleaning her daughter's plate for her. It was nice to see Tara so energetic, but April couldn't help but feel a little left out.
"Mama." Tara audibly gasped as she looked at the photograph, "I do not remember you ever being this big."
"It was right after I had your sister, cut me some slack." the huffed the bottom-heavy mother of two, "Your father was out of the house a lot and I was... bored."
Once upon a time when Tara was still a toddler, April had been a much, much bigger girl than the woman who brought her daughters up. Being a single mother after Dad's accident must have kicked her into high-gear, because there was no way that the woman wedged between the photo frame could have kept up with Tara and Haley as kids.
"Do I remember this? That sweater looks awful familiar..."
It was still April's tie-around-the-waist sweater. A tried and true Autumn tradition to help hide how plump her buns were getting with all these extra portions. Once upon a time that thing had to stretch across over two-hundred and eighty pounds of April West. Now, since even at fifty pounds lighter April's backside was still broad all around, only its arms had to suffer.
"Give me that." April rolled her eyes, scoffing as she took the photo back from her daughter and settled back into place, "Well we know what's not going in the scrapbook..."
Haley had been a hungry baby. By the time April had gotten pregnant with her, she still hadn't managed to shed the extra weight she picked up from Tara. Truthfully, she never would. But whether it was the stress of raising Tara while her husband was at work or just April's pregnancy cravings for all things Little Debbie, she'd absolutely ballooned during the pregnancy. Even by Haley's first birthday in the photograph, April was still pretty huge.
She used to wear her brown hair long and with bangs. They framed her cheeks as she cheesed dough-faced into the camera, holding an infant Haley and the hand of a toddler Tara. More than twenty years ago, April had been so big around the backside that her knees touched and so frontloaded that it looked like she was resting her arm into her stomach. Around the time she realized that she had completely lost her jawline she'd made the switch to wearing her hair shorter, but it took photos like this for her to realize how fat her face had gotten.
"It's Haley's first birthday! You of all people are gonna keep something like that out?"
"I didn't say that..."
At the end of the day, April was happy to have all these photos together. They'd put a desk in her She Shed, and now she had something to do in here to help her get used to the idea. If she wasn't at work, April could still have somewhere that was hers to just relax in.
Or failing that, now she'd have a private space to hunt down every photo Hank took of her when she was at her biggest—that way she could spare herself the embarrassment of her own daughter ribbing her about this later...
* * *
"Alright, it's late—I'm headed to bed."
A few hours later, Tara yawned and stretched after a day's hard work putting together April's She Shed. By the time April was Tara's age, she'd already had two daughters. And now here Tara was helping her move furniture around the house, while April was filling out the seat in her roomiest pair of pajama pants.
"You gonna be up for a little while?"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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