Monthly Short Story for November: Enjoying Retirement (Patreon)

Hello Commissioned Pioneers! :D As promised as always, in accordance with the results of last month's poll, I present to you the Bonus Story of the Month! There were a total of four choices once again, with a majority voting for Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School Side Story 11.

On this little peek into the universe of WPA, we get to see a character only name dropped and referenced to by Emma over the course of her adventures in the Academy - Aunty Ran! :D As we see just how she’s coping being alone now that Emma’s off on her own adventures much further away from home than she could ever imagine!

This chapter was both fun, but also a bit nerve wracking to write haha, as I wanted to do Aunty Ran’s character right given how much she means to Emma. I wanted to balance her own independence streak with a sense of both care and parenting that helped to mold Emma into the person she is today. I wanted to make sure that I got all aspects of her personality down, but because of that I’m genuinely worried whether or not it might make her seem either too cold or too contrived. I hope I struck a balance with this one, and I hope it turns out alright! I also get to explore a bit of what Earth is like to the average joe in this chapter, so that was fun as well! :D I hope that also turned out okay haha.

Let's jump right into it then! :D I'd like to proudly present, Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School's eleventh side story! :D

Enjoying Retirement

Sol - Earth - Acela Corridor - NYC New Quarter - Brooklyn (New Borough) - 927 Newborough Lane - 23rd Floor - Apartment Unit 25 - The Ran Booker Household.

4 Hours Following Emma’s Departure

Ran Booker

Quiet.

You forget what it sounds like until you finally hear it again.

Or, more accurately, until you don’t.

Until you don’t hear any other noises that is. Because that’s what quiet meant. Peace, and freedom from anything but your own actions.

I sat there for hours after dropping her off at the airport.

Then, I cooked dinner, but quickly realized that I’d made a meal for two instead of for one.

It should’ve clicked with me by that point.

But the emptiness and the reality of it all didn’t really hit me until about 3pm the next day. It was a Wednesday, a school day, one of her longer ones at that. Which meant I should’ve felt the distinct ka-thunk of the centuries-old elevator before I had about ten seconds to brace myself for the rattle, creak, then SLAM of the heritage front door.

But as seconds ticked on into minutes, nothing happened.

There was no distinctive and apartment-rattling SLAM followed by an equally blood-pumping I’M HOME. There was no sudden influx or injection of smalltalk into what would’ve been up to that point, a calm and quiet lull period between school hours. There was nothing. Nothing but my own thoughts to preoccupy me, and an empty page on a monitor that was slowly being encroached by the panacea of boredom that was WeTube and Chirpr.

At the end of it, the empty page was no match for this combined assault, and I was for the first time, without an Emma-related justification for not working on my now decade-delayed book.

I should’ve felt empty.

And in a way, I did.

But at the same time, I couldn’t deny how freeing the lack of responsibility was.

Because for the first time since I hung up the white, blue, and bronze, I finally felt free.

“Emma?” I tentatively spoke into the hallway, before leading to the same routines that I usually did every evening. “EMMA, FOOD!”

Nothing.

Nothing but the annoyed meows from Bim Bim.

The silence was deafening.

The silence was powerful.

The silence was in equal measures golden as it was confusingly gut-wrenching.

“Alrighty then.” I stood up, speaking to no one in particular as I began walking to the kitchen, opening up a cabinet that I’d rarely opened after Emma’s arrival into my small little world.

The forbidden spice rack.

All of the spices the spice-averse girl couldn’t handle.

It was time to actually start cooking again.

More than that, it was finally time to turn the apartment back to the way it was.

“Computer?” I turned towards the living room, addressing the smart screen that now followed me across the space.

“Yes, Ms. Booker?”

“You still got User Profile 1 saved?”

“Yes, Ms. Booker.”

I couldn’t help but to grin wide. “Alright, that saves me a whole heck of a lotta trouble. Restore Hidden User Profile 1.”

“Processing request…” The boring thing spoke, before finally, its screen turned a dull orangeish-amber, and its ‘face’ completely disappeared, revealing a UI I was happy to see back.

“Done, boss.” It finally replied in a tone that more resembled that customized UI I knew and loved.

“Alright, good. Now set current configs to default…” I spoke as I began rummaging through the spice rack, only for my heart to sink as I realized I’d underestimated just how long it’d been from the day I started this little stash to the day I decided to crack it open. Suffice it to say, I’d either be burning that whole cabinet, or more realistically… the cleaner bot would be at it for a good hour at a minimum. “... and call Chaiwong.”

“Alright, starting call, boss.”

The call went through surprisingly quickly, revealing a man with what looked to be a greenhouse in the background. A greenhouse… with a view at that. As the man seemed to have either upgraded out-of-pocket, or finally got the paperwork through the proper channels to get a setup like that.

The man dressed unnecessarily in suspiciously clean gardener’s overalls took notice of my silence at his backdrop, as he took a few steps to the side, giving me an unimpeded view of exactly what I thought I saw.

A Class V Greenhouse in the Pentrose District, with a view that overlooked the ocean at that.

Not too shabby…

“Ran, it’s been a while.” The man spoke with a grin on his face and a peppiness in his voice.

“It really has, Pat.” I responded, before whistling a high pitched tone at the scenery behind him. “You’ve upgraded I see.”

“Hmm?” The man feigned ignorance, only turning towards the jaw dropping scene with a cocky grin. “Oh you mean this? Yeah, you could say that.” He let out a few chuckles, before ending it off with a simple shrug. “In all seriousness though, things have been good. I’m not one to brag but… yeah, I can get used to this.”

“Pentrose district?”

“I mean, you know I wouldn’t settle for anything less.”

“Is that a rooftop or a terrace unit?”

“Terrace. Good god Ran, you think I’d be dumb enough to get a rooftop? Rooftops’ are always a hit or a miss. You know how it is, to comply with demand and state-citizen-access, you get less bang for your efforts up there. Either sharing the unit with others outright, or having it sub-divided into different leases. With a terrace unit you’re at least guaranteed assured sole-occupancy by the Housing Bureau, the Standards of Living Bureau, and the VA.”

“Out-of-pocket, or fixed-life-lease?” I shot out with a cock of my head.

“The latter. With an open option clause for the former should the sitting co-op board at the time-of-request agree to that transaction.”

“You thinking of pulling the trigger on that deal?”

“Eh, not really. My kid’s gunning for a long-term position over in the Antarctic WCSC, dating a spacer, and doesn’t really have much of a green thumb. It’d be cruel to leave her stuck with a place like this. She’d be more into a Mercurian pre-fab than a city greenhouse, sooooo I’m not too worried about generational inheritance over this place. Someone else who actually wants to live the solarcity life can take it after I drop dead.” The man paused, before raising a single finger to quickly readdress a few points. “Okay that might’ve come out more negative than I meant it to.”

“It’s alright, Pat. It comes with the territory of being old.” I spoke through a strained and self-deprecating breath.

“Heh. Yeah, you’d know a thing or two about that huh? Especially when living and raising a literal teen. Anyways, what’s up with your kid nowadays?

That statement caught me off guard.

And not because I didn’t know how to address Emma and her chosen path in life, no.

It was just… always jarring to hear friends from before Emma’s arrival referring to her as anything but a niece.

Emma’s arrival into my life was nothing short of a fundamental shift in its trajectory. And whilst at first I’d been reluctant to take on the role, the longer it went the more it just became second nature, it just so happens however that I never really sat down to digest it.

I’d been playing the role of an unwitting mother for the past decade now.

And it just hit me that that whole chapter of my life was just… done.

An entire decade of work, just… finished.

“She’s gone.”

“Gone? Like-”

“Flew the roost, gone to play hero and all that jazz. You know how it is, you weren’t always this slow on the uptake, Pat.” I chided, trying my best not to admit to Pat… or maybe more so myself, that Emma’s departure was actually starting to affect me in any other way than a relief from responsibility.

The man took that response in stride, chortling in response. “Heh, you’re one to talk. You aren’t looking too hot yourself there Ran.”

“Hey hey hey! That’s no way to talk to your senior, Pat.” I shot back with a shit-eating grin.

“Hah! Alright Ran. What do you want? I’m sure you didn’t just call because you wanted to hang. This ain’t the medal-tour after all.”

I raised both arms up in defeat. “You caught me there. I’m going to need spices, Pat, the good kind, the kind from back home.”

“Oh, oh.” The man let out a sinister maniacal grin as he went off screen for a while, the camera soon following him across what seemed to be the idyllic solarcity setup. What amounted to a modest, yet smartly designed apartment unit that integrated its centrally positioned greenhouse in such a way that it became the focal point of the whole space. With the corridors lined with glass and plastic tubing that likewise hosted hydroponics, taking advantage of the natural sunlight on the balcony, with several mirrors, windows, and other similarly smart-assisted refractive surfaces always focusing light towards these live plants. Imbuing the space with natural light, and adding to the whole solarcity ambiance the entire Pentrose district was built to embody. The man eventually ran towards one section of the wall-mounted hydroponics setup in particular, as he plucked what Emma would’ve referred to as the evil chillies right from its branches. “You mean these?”

“Yes.” I responded with uninhibited delight.

“Well it’s gonna cost ya.”

“What’s the damage?”

“A meetup with the old crew.” The man responded with a twinge of sentimentality. “It’s honestly been far too long Ran, and we need to catch up.”

=====

Sol - Earth - Acela Corridor - NYC New Quarter - Brooklyn (New Borough) - 927 Newborough Lane - 23rd Floor - Apartment Unit 25 - The Ran Booker Household.

4 Hours Prior to Emma’s Departure

Ran Booker

“Now, have you double checked you have everything you need?”

“Yes Aunty Ran, everything’s double, triple, and quadruple checked and accounted for.” The girl replied with a frustrated groan, one that if I’d been keeping count of, would’ve probably accounted for at least half of our interactions after she’d entered her more independent teen streak.

Though thankfully, the girl wasn’t as rebellious as many other of her peers seemed to be.

Frustrated backtalk was to be expected. Messiness, a lack of regimentation of home life, that was annoying but all within the realm of tolerability.

Or at least, that’s what those parenting classes and handbooks taught me. The latter resources provided courtesy of the family welfare agency was a godsend that saved me more times than I would’ve liked to admit.

Besides, whilst I hated to admit it, that chaotic energy actually brought some fun back into what had otherwise by that point been a routine I was starting to settle into. A routine revolving around giving talks, lectures, commencement speeches, and most frustratingly of all… completing the darned second memoir that just never got anywhere.

Part of me knew I’d miss this little scrunkly mass of chaos that rivaled Bim Bim in her unbridled energy.

Even though a part of me also knew that I’d relish the quiet that would come as a result.

“You say that.” I began with a faint sigh, before snapping my fingers once, prompting the household cleaning bot to begin weaving its way underneath her bed, finding some essentials that wouldn’t have been entirely disastrous, but at least frustrating to lose prior to departure. “But I have reason to doubt that you’ve actually gone through with it. That, or you’re very selective about what you double, triple, and quadruple check for.” I snatched the house keys from the cleaning bot’s hands before Emma could, prompting the shorter girl to stare at me with a look of annoyance as we inevitably began our little game.

I held the keys just above her head in an open palm.

Emma’s eyes narrowed towards them.

Seconds passed.

Then, she made her play.

Her right hand reached for it, only for me to pull back just milliseconds before contact.

“Too slow.” I snorted out through a sneer.

The cycle began again, with an open palm, a disgruntled glare, a quick-snatch attempt, and a similarly failed attempt.

“You’re going to have to react quicker when dealing with real world situations, Emma.” I cautioned the girl, just as we ran through the motions again. Once more, ending up with another victory for my end.

“Power armor and exoskeletons enhance your reflexes.” She spoke through a disgruntled breath.

“And both can fail.” I cautioned, as we began our rapid fire back and forth motions of offensive and defensive actions. “More than that, it augments your reflexes. You need some good ones to start out with, otherwise it makes the gap between skill and projected abilities that much more jarring.”

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

“I am.” I admitted in a rare instance of weakness, which quickly prompted Emma to halt her fast-paced advances, cocking her head as a result.

“What?”

“What? You didn’t expect me to have come out of boot camp and the academy with a Star of Terra slapped to my chest did you? We all had to start from somewhere, Emma. And every lesson I’ve told you thus far didn’t just come from some dusty textbook, manual, guide, or field flowchart. It came from my own shortcomings, and the dumbass mistakes I made along the way that I sorely regretted when the Jovian Insurrections reared its ugly head around. Mistakes that I had to quickly unlearn to actually do my job.” I paused, wincing internally somewhat as self-deprecating jokes aside, admitting these sorts of things to someone I was attempting to mentor just didn’t sit right with me… but it felt like it was necessary. Especially now, while I still had the chance to do so. “And I’m telling you right now, one of those major mistakes is an over reliance on external augs. You can’t just over rely on equipment to compensate for your shortcomings. There’s a gap that the equipment will bring you up to spec, but the larger the gap that exists, the harder it will be to adapt to your equipment doing the work for you.”

“Like playing Galactic Heroes with a cheatbot and kinda just getting lost in the flow instead of actually playing the game.” Emma replied with yet another one of her bizarrely drawn comparisons that made me question both my age and my cross-generational cultural literacy. “Or letting the tutorial run forever in that one bug in Legends of the Ages and it kinda weirdly becomes its own thing and maximizes your stats but when you actually decide to exit the tutorial you just lose all the progress you made because you don’t know how to handle the tutorial AI’s playstyle.”

“I… guess? I mean… I’d compare it to something more like allowing autopilot to take control of a plane with an under trained pilot. Sure he might know the basics of how everything works, but when push comes to shove in an emergency and he needs to aviate, navigate, and then communicate, he’s gonna be lost on the aviate bit cause’ he’s become so used to the autopilot doing the aviating for him.” I let out a sigh before sitting down next to Emma on her bed. “Listen Emma, metaphors aside, and let’s just try not to get into more metaphors because it’s clear that that crap is just incompatible with the Booker family… I just want to make sure you don't make the same mistakes I did alright? It’s easy to get complacent, especially as we’re entering what… the latter half of our third century of peace now? And before you say it, no, that little skirmish that was the Jovian Insurrections doesn’t count. It was an anomaly. I’m talking about real wars and real conflicts. Emma, I’m just…”

“Worried?”

“I guess you could say that, yeah.”

“You know you could’ve just said that right?” The girl reasoned with a shift in inflexion, now veering more towards her cocky yet happy go lucky self.

“I know. But maybe that’s why they turned me into a silent protag in all those games of yours. Maybe they were onto something with that.” I admitted through a dumb chuckle.

“Nah, they did that ‘cause they were just trying to avoid lawsuits from you.”

“Point.”

“And you know what’s another point?”

“What?”

The girl, in a moment of cold-hearted tactical brilliance, snatched the keys from my open palm without a second thought.

“That.” Emma announced triumphantly through a mischievous grin, with not even a hint of regret present in her gleeful little eyes. A gaze that I couldn’t help but to meet with a look of satisfaction, and a grin that I couldn’t help but to smile warmly at, as those barriers I’d tried to uphold as something of a parent and an authority figure finally broke down, if only for those few moments.

“I’ll give you that, Emma.” I responded not with disappointment in my own tactical loss, but with a sense of pride in the girl’s capabilities. “Remember what I told you about war. There’s-”

“-there’s no shame in taking advantage of the situation so long as you don’t break the rules of war. Yeah, I remember Aunty Ran.”

A small smile crept across my face as I heard that, as I realized that maybe, juust maybe, some of these lessons might’ve actually stuck with the girl.

Moreover, the fact that she actually memorized it verbatim… was something that I couldn’t help but feel proud about.

“Oh, and Aunty?”

“Yes, Emma?”

“I love you.”

…

“I love you too, my little wannabe trooper.”

=====

Sol - Earth - Acela Corridor - NYC New Quarter - Brooklyn (New Borough) - 927 Newborough Lane - 23rd Floor - Apartment Unit 25 - The Ran Booker Household.

11 Months Following Emma’s Departure

Ran Booker

It was time to admit it.

The silence was more fatigue-inducing than it was a boon for my work.

More than that, it was clearly doing something to me, cause the boredom got me curious enough to try out one of Emma’s games nominally based on my Jovian misadventures.

And the result?

Was pretty bad.

So bad in fact that I needed to drown it out with something actually decent.

And I had just the thing.

Daytime soaps.

“Hello brother.”

“Johnathan! You’re back from the war!”

“Yes brother. But I have news, you know our other brother, Timothy?”

“Yes, but why are you bringing him up? He’s been dead for five years.”

“Well he’s actually alive.”

“What?!”

“Yes. But he has amnesia.”

“No!”

“And he’s the only one who knows where the family treasure is.”

“Fuck this is bad.” I let out a frustrated sigh as I rushed to change the channel.

Part of me thought I’d enjoy this more without her.

But maybe half the fun was actually having her sassy commentary on the subpar plot and contrived dialogue?

It couldn’t be though.

I enjoyed the show before she even arrived.

Or at least, I thought I did.

Now the whole show just felt… lacking. The way Blick Block tends to feel lacking when you forget to enable a texture pack, shaders, or some hidden quality of life mod.

Maybe I did enjoy it when she interrupted the show every other second.

Maybe her commentary did add that extra layer of umf.

Perhaps.

But I didn’t want to dwell on it.

Maybe it was about time for a walk.

Stepping out of the apartment without Emma to worry about was still as freeing as it was weird. Snapping back to solo living mode wasn’t exactly hard to do, it was just… off.

But maybe that’s what living for an entire decade with someone, raising them through to adulthood, would do to you.

Entering the seasonally-decorated apartment corridor, I was met with an elderly couple with what looked to be a pile of junk in a platform trolley being pushed along by a larger humanoid robot.

A few seconds was all it took for the pair to approach me, as smalltalk immediately commenced soon after.

“Ahh, Sergeant Major. How goes your day?” The older woman spoke first, looking up at me with a pair of kind eyes, and an expectant look that I knew was about to lead into a subject matter we both needed to touch upon.

“Well enough, Mrs. Ramirez.” I responded tactfully, before narrowing my gaze at the pile of what was effectively old furniture and kitchen appliances. “Recycling day?”

“Indeed it is. We were just about to pop down to the apartment’s print-fab to make a few repairs.” She pointed at some of the appliances that were a bit less worse for wear. “All they need is a bit of TLC and some parts to get up and running again.” She spoke, before shifting her pointer finger towards what was in effect pieces of furniture that were more or less completely unsalvageable. “Though the rest of this is indeed headed back into the cycle-net. In fact, we were planning on heading to the local requisition center immediately after.”

“Are you thinking of replacing them right away?”

“Yes. We’re expecting guests over in a few days after all.”

I nodded along. “I thought you preferred the handicrafts over in the Exchange Tower?” I offered, prompting the pair to let out a small chuckle in response.

“Oh we do, but when it comes to lounge chairs and plush furniture? You can’t beat the mass-prods from the requisitions center. Some things are just better from a mass-fab than a pair of hands. Besides, we’ve barely spent any of our annual requisition units this year on account of not really needing anything replaced, might as well spend some of it before year’s end.”

“Fair enough.” I nodded. “We definitely both see eye to eye on that front.” I offered with an awkward chuckle.

“So what brings you out today, Sergeant Major?” Mr. Ramirez finally joined the conversation proper.

“Oh, I just needed some air, that's all.”

“I know the feeling.” Mrs. Ramiirez replied with a sullen sigh. “Sometimes you just need a break from the kids. Speaking of, how is Emma doing?”

“She actually just shipped off earlier this year.”

“To the military?”

“Yup.”

“I knew it!” Mr. Ramirez responded with an excitable grin, turning to his wife expectantly. “Told you she’d be following in her Aunt’s footsteps!”

The conversation had suddenly, and abruptly, shifted on the spot. As Mrs. Ramirez seemed none too pleased about her husband’s little jab.

“I apologize for my husband’s excitableness, Sergeant Major.”

“It’s alright. I know family legacy’s a heck of a thing in both of our cultures so… the excitement is to be expected.” I offered with a conciliatory chuckle, placing both of my hands firmly in my pockets.

“You must be very proud about her chosen career path, Sergeant Major. To see the younger generations take after you is indeed quite a sight for sore eyes.” The man continued unabated, prompting me to simply shrug in response.

“It is what it is. Maybe I rubbed off on her, maybe it was destined to be this way all along. All that matters is that it was her choice, and all I can hope for is that she’s happy with her chosen path.”

“As parents, grandparents, and great grandparents that’s honestly all we can hope for, Sergeant Major.” Mrs. Ramirez responded with a respectful nod. “In any case, we’ve taken enough of your time as it is. So don’t let us keep you from your walk.” She gestured towards the elevator.

“Thank you, both of you take it easy now alright?”

“Oh don’t worry about us. 127 is the new 97 as they say!” Mr. Ramirez spoke with that same sense of excitableness from before.

“Oh, before you go, Sergeant Major.”

“Yes, Mrs. Ramirez?”

“Do pop into the apartment complex’s co-op meeting some time. Especially the next meeting. We’re going to be discussing whether or not we want to renovate the pool room.”

“Do you mean the pool room with the billiards and games, or the pool room with the water and the life preserve donuts?”

“The latter, Sergeant Major.” Mrs. Ramirez replied with just a casually despondent sigh. “Some peeps want to add one of those immersive static holo projections in there to turn it into a veritable beach at will. You know what I say to that? I say, no! Take a train to the beach if you want to enjoy the sunshine and sand! It only takes half an hour at rush hour to get down there. So stop trying to change things that are practically heritage-grade gosh darnit!”

I couldn’t help but to let out a small chuckle at that.

Apartment-complex politics were really something.

That point was something both Emma and I could agree on any day of the week.

“I’ll see if I can attend it, Mrs. Ramirez.”

“Of course, Sergeant Major. I know you have a book to write, and commencement speeches to give, so there’s no pressure from us to attend. Just… remotely cast your vote if you can, please?”

“Will do, Mrs. Ramirez.” I chuckled lightly as I entered the elevator. “Will do.”

=====

Sol - Earth - Acela Corridor - NYC New Quarter - Brooklyn (New Borough) - Elevated Public Square Level 5 - Victory Plaza.

11 Months Following Emma’s Departure

Ran Booker

The holiday celebrations were now out and in full swing.

And it would’ve been a lie to say that the spirit of it all wasn’t at least a bit infectious.

As I strolled up and out of the legacy 23rd century brownstone apartment, towards an elevated platform, and up several more platforms towards what many out of towners would call an elevated promenade. Something Acela was renowned for, and something that truly was even more magical when set against the backdrop of winter and the seemingly endless Christmas and preemptive New Years celebrations that popped up around us.

For on this elevated patch of sidewalk, leading into several elevated entrances into other apartments, commercial spaces, and even offices - was the veritable beating heart of the borough.

Christmas lights and festive trees were strewn about every which way, and so too were the licensed street vendors selling anything from handmade Christmas-themed trinkets to the more coveted food popup stalls.

Home made food was one thing.

But there was something about popup stalls of people selling their own homemade food that was even more tempting. Especially when the ingredients were sourced from cottage farms, despite there being no true ‘discernable difference’ in the ingredients after baking, I still elected to buy into the placebo.

The whole atmosphere looked like a scene out of a movie.

What with the old quarter skyline in the background, the starscrapers further beyond being barely visible given the snowy conditions, and the elevated plaza itself hosting this year’s New Borough Christmas tree. A massive conifer carefully chosen from the reconstituted forests of Canada, and flown in via drone.

The Christmas Fly-Ins as they were called were by themselves something of a spectacle, as several air-lanes had to be closed for hours on end for these seemingly endless streams of trees to trickle into the ceaselessly hungry and ravenous megacity of Acela.

And it was worth it too. As there wasn’t really a sight that could compare to that impressively sized Christmas tree, standing tall and high above the various stalls, with lights and decorations that bathed the local snow in shades of red, green, and white.

The atmosphere was just so jovial and seasonal that time had completely flown by me, as I realized that the long queue I’d entered had suddenly cleared up, finding myself right in front of the coveted Martha Field’s Secret Cookies pop-up stall.

“What’ll it be-”

The store clerk suddenly stopped in his tracks, as he stared at me as if realizing… Oh no.

“Are you…”

Here it comes…

“Sergeant Major Ran?”

I let out a frosty sigh. “Yes, that’s me.”

“I’m afraid all we have left right now are milk chocolate chips, raisins, ANZACs, and Macadamias, ma’am. But pick whatever you like and it’ll be on the house-”

“It’s alright kid.” I offered with yet another frosty sigh. “I’ll just have a dozen chockie chips. Oh, and erm, none of this on the house stuff alright? Just let me pay.”

A small appreciative nod and a ding of the electronic cash register later, and I was finally in the possession of a paper bag of piping hot cookies.

Leaving the line, and approaching one of the many public benches, I sat down a little ways away from the hustle and bustle of the plaza.

There, I sat, doing what I tended to do over the holidays prior to Emma’s arrival into my life.

People watching.

I watched silently as families walked hand in hand from storefront to storefront, toddlers and children cackling in delight to the tune of ancient songs in the background.

I watched and hummed to the tune of the bands, the carolers, and the choirs as they moved to and fro along various marked paths.

I watched and reminisced on those ten years of Christmases with Emma, as I turned towards the empty space next to me currently gathering snow, and placed a gloved hand atop of it like the sentimental old woman I was unfortunately becoming.

“Here’s to you Emma.” I spoke softly to myself, pulling out a still piping hot chocolate chip cookie, and biting into it whole. “I hope you’re alright, wherever you are…” I spoke as I chewed, munching down on the morsel and savoring every last bite of it. “Here’s to you, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, my brave little trooper.”