Becoming

Chains Of Misery

After a couple of days with Ade in Montreal, Dave got home to Maui, arriving in time for the Fourth of July celebrations. The section of Kihei where they lived held a luau at the local park each year, with children's games, art and photography competitions, live music, and of course, a fireworks display after sunset.

One of the neighbors, himself a recent transplant from Texas to Kihei, teased him good-naturedly for his British citizenship and how it must annoy him to have to celebrate the first big loss of the British Empire. Dave gave back as good as he got, teasing back that it wasn't such a big loss after all, since it meant that the British didn't have to put up with Texan-sized egos on a regular basis. The unexpectedly witty reply left the Texas transplant speechless and the rest of the neighbours, who'd gotten to know him since he and Tamar married and moved into their house several years earlier, laughing.

Aside from the Texan, most of the neighbors flocked around Dave and Tamar because they wanted to see Tasha, as this was the infant's first real outing aside from her checkups with her pediatrician. Tasha was still quite small at just under six pounds, but as Tamar expressed it to one of the women who got a bit too judgmental of their parenting in her comments, "You're kidding, right? You do know that her due date is in two weeks, right? Of course she's going to be small for her age!"

As they headed home after the fireworks, Dave told Tamar, "As we've a bit of a gap in between the Swiss dates that got rescheduled and that show we're doing as a part of the Bol d'Or weekend, Steve and Rod have asked us to come to England and do our songwriting retreat during that time and possibly a bit after as well. So I'll be here for just under two months, but I'll be gone for most of September, if you're all right with that?"

"I don't see any problems," Tamar said. "I was thinking, though, we might consider hiring a nanny? I know Nathalie and Ade managed well enough with Dylan, but she had him during the year Maiden took time off and then he left and so she's pretty much had help at home all along. And mind, I'm not complaining about you being gone so often, I do understand that it's the nature of your work. But even if Ade's away, Nathalie's got her brother as well as her parents, plus some extended family all close enough to jump in if she ever needed help."

Dave nodded. "Right, and you're an only child, and both your parents are only children, so it's just you and them. And I suspect you'd prefer not to depend on your mum for help more than absolutely necessary, am I right? Your mum is a lovely lady, but she does have a habit of jumping in and trying to take over instead of asking how she can best help. And not just with you, with nearly anything – I seem to remember her annoying the staff at the country club when they were setting up for that charity luncheon, simply because the system they were using 'didn't seem right' to her and she wanted to get them to do it her way, never mind that they'd done it their way for countless events already and knew what they were doing."

Tamar chuckled ruefully. "Yeah, that's Mom all right! I'm just glad that Dad suggested I go to college on the mainland, to get away from her for a few years and figure out who I am, instead of constantly being pressured to be who she wanted me to be. Anyway, yeah, I figure hiring a nanny will be worth it, just to keep Mom from trying to raise Tasha for us. I'll have the help whenever you're off with Maiden, which means I won't have to keep calling her for help if I do run into any problems."

"It makes perfect sense to me," Dave agreed. "I understand from Ade that he and Nathalie are also looking into hiring a nanny. Yeah, they do have Nathalie's extended family in the area, but he and her brother are putting a band together and so they'll likely be off doing small tours and the like soon – not to mention, with three in nappies, they'd both just as soon have an extra pair of hands about even when he is home."