I can't give you anything but love, baby, that's the only thing I've plenty of

[intheruins]

Like everything else in Darrow, it seems that raising a baby is completely different to what it had been in North Carolina.

Sent home with few disposable diapers, bottles and something that they call formula, Serena isn't at all sure where she ought to start when it comes to setting up a nursery for George. There's only one bedroom in her apartment which means their space will be shared, but Serena still wants a corner of his own, a bassinet and a mobile and a changing table to begin with.

Just getting around with a newborn proves difficult, especially after surgery. A woman in a supply store mentions something about babywearing when Serena arrives simply holding George against her chest, swaddled against the cool. Then she goes on and on about the difference between strollers and prams and Serena finds herself longing for a time when things were much less complicated.

More than anything, she finds herself longing for the antique bassinet that Pemberton had imported to the camp and Pemberton with it.

It takes far longer than it should but eventually Serena decides on a bassinet to keep by her bed and changing table - both in white. She asks for them to be delivered but leaves with a dozen smaller things in a bag. She still hasn't settled on a pram, though, and the struggle to balance a baby in one arm and her purchases in the other means she drops her shopping bag, burp cloths and clothes and pacifiers falling onto the sidewalk.

Comments

[ghostsarereal]

Though this is, at least, a far cry better than being buried under feet of snow in the middle of winter, Edith can't help but wish that the weather would make up its mind. This strange back and forth between unseasonably cool and unseasonably warm would be enough to drive anyone crazy, and days like the former — like today — leave her leg aching with the chill. She's gotten used to it, mostly, the doctors who told her after she arrived that the leg she broke would probably never quite heal probably having been correct in that assumption, but that doesn't mean she likes the occasions where it aches a little more than usual.

She is, as a result, just a bit slower than she would normally be getting home, a shopping bag hooked over the crook of her arm. She's hardly so weighed down, though, that she can't stop when she sees a woman with an infant drop a bag of her own, its contents falling to the sidewalk. "Oh, let me help you with that," she offers quickly, then smiles, small but polite. "It seems like you have your hands full already."

[intheruins]

"Oh, yes, thank you," Serena says, scattered but grateful. She's not supposed to carry too much or bend too far and there's so many other things holding her back. It's why she's supposed to have a husband, she figures, why Pemberton ought to be here.

But he isn't. "I'm still figuring out what to do about a pram, it's all so confusing."

The sooner she has one the sooner she can push George about and the sooner she stops dropping things and having to break doctor's orders to collect them. If only they weren't all so complicated, all possessing features that apparently are essential but babies have survived centuries without.

[ghostsarereal]

"Goodness, I can only imagine," Edith says, shaking her head a little at the thought. There'd been a time she had imagined, expected that she would bear Thomas's children, but that seems impossibly long ago now. Things are different in Darrow, anyway, than she knew them to be back home. Expectations have changed, and she can't say they're changes she's unhappy with. Strange, certainly, and difficult to adjust to, but in so many cases, for the better.

Then again, there's plenty that's more complicated, too, as this seems to be proof of. Even with her leg to consider, it isn't too difficult to crouch and start gathering the fallen items, placing them back in the bag as she does. "I wouldn't have the first idea where to start."

[intheruins]

"That makes two of us," Serena says. She's had Beth for help, of course, but Beth has concerns of her own so it's not like Serena can call her at any time. Were she back home and without a husband she might be able to at least get the help of a nanny or nurse, but here she's only been given enough money to start off.

Which is better than nothing, but she's still found herself in a difficult place. At night she feels so overwhelmed by it she thinks she might go mad from it all. "Thank you, again, for your help. We both appreciate it."

[ghostsarereal]

"It's no trouble at all," Edith says, getting carefully to her feet once she's put the fallen items back into the bag, nearly holding it out before she reconsiders. Instead, she asks, "Where are you headed? I could walk with you, give you a little less to have to carry?" It may be a strange thing to offer a stranger, but it wouldn't seem quite right to do otherwise, when it's too easy to imagine the same happening in another block or two. When she's in no hurry to get anywhere herself, not carrying enough for it to be any kind of interference, she figures she may as well ask.

[intheruins]

"Home, technically," Serena says. It's too far to walk the whole way – to think the timber camp had once felt so big – but she doesn't want to call a cab just yet. She only has limited means and so the further they go on foot, the cheaper it will be. "But I was going to try and get a cab in a couple blocks or so. If you have the time," she says, then pauses to look between them. She'd never imagined she'd accept as much charity as she has in this city. "Well, we wouldn't mind the company."

[ghostsarereal]

"I have plenty of time," Edith assures her warmly, glad, at least, that the offer hasn't come across too strangely. It's true, anyway. Here, her time is her own, spent intermittently taking care of her apartment and visiting the library or friends and working on her writing. That isn't entirely new, but it still seems to come with a level of freedom that she's never had before, no father looking over her shoulder, no being stranded in the middle of the English countryside. "And I wouldn't mind the company myself. I'm Edith, by the way."

[intheruins]

"The pleasure's mine," Serena says, bouncing George a little in her arms. She's still getting used to motherhood, of course, but there's something new and wonderful about carrying him. The weight of him, the warmth of him. She'd wanted him for so long, longer than she'd known Pemberton. But she'd never imagined she'd have him. She never thought she'd have family again. "And I'm Serena. This is George."

[ghostsarereal]

"It's very nice to meet you both," Edith says, finding that she means it. The baby is a darling little thing, even if she still can't help the vague thoughts that cross her mind about the life she once would have had. Most conventions, she's never been particularly interested in trying to follow, but some things simply seemed to speak for themselves, too. She can't say she's sorry that her life here is so different from what she expected, but that doesn't make it any less strange to consider sometimes. "Are you from here, or somewhere else?"

[intheruins]

"I'm from North Carolina," Serena answers. Technically, she's from Colorado but she's come to learn that here most people want to know the last place a person lived or simply was. That and the time. It's strange how few people flinch when she says 1929, but no stranger than the fact she's here at all. "George was born here, though. What about you?"

[ghostsarereal]

"I was born in New York," Edith answers, pleased that Serena's response is somewhere she knows of, though she's never been herself. When there are those who come from different worlds, places the likes of which she could barely imagine, anything the least bit familiar, some sort of common ground, is welcome. "Buffalo. I'd moved to England very shortly before I found myself here, though."

[intheruins]

"I've been to New York once or twice," Serena says. She's more familiar with Boston but it's still comforting to meet someone from a place that she knows the name of. Here, it hasn't happened very often. She might not know every dot on every map but she certainly hasn't ever heard of any Darrow and it still sounds strange in her mouth. "Never Buffalo. And never England. I didn't get to travel beyond the United States but now that we're here, well. I'll have to stop wishing myself away."

[ghostsarereal]

"It was the first time I'd ever been," Edith offers, not adding that she'd been so trapped there, that she almost died there. Something about that had made it all the more difficult, knowing that it would be happening so far from what she still considered home. Home is still Buffalo, the golden light filtering into her family's house, her father in his study grumbling away about something or other. She doesn't think anything could change that, no matter how long gone and out of reach that life is now. A marriage certainly couldn't. "And I'd never left Buffalo before then. It was.... quite a change. Almost as much as showing up here was."