Title: Forever and Always

Author: Rentgirl 2

Category: Alternate Universes, Drama

Rating: R

Warnings: AU

Pairing: J/B

Summary: As autumn approaches and the school year begins, Naomi Sandburg reminisces.

Author's website: http://www.therentgirls.com

This tale, as are all my The Sentinel stories, is for Rentgirl one. You made me love Blair forever and always. Your punishment is to beta for me until the end of time. Special thanks to the Beta-Bunch (Pam, Star, Mary, Annette and Elaine). Y'all saved us more than once.

Although this story is set in our Pinecrest Universe, it stands alone.



Forever and Always
By Rentgirl 2


This time of year always reminds me of him.

Not that I don't think of him often, how could I not, but something about that vague current of crispness underlying the heat of the end of summer calls all my memories of him forward.

I was driving behind a big yellow school bus this afternoon. I had a couple of chances to pass it when the road widened, but I chose to stay behind it as it stopped frequently letting out clusters of small children. I watched as they shifted their backpacks, lunchboxes and construction paper art projects, getting ready for the short walk from the bus stop to their homes.

The public schools here have switched to uniforms. The old hippy in me hated to see the conformity of boys in tiny blue shorts and white shirts, the girls in tiny blue plaid skirts and white blouses, but the never-destined-to-be-a-grandmother in me was enthralled with the adorable look. Something about the shining health of their skin peeking out of crisp linen and wool, made me long to hold a child again.

I'll never have an opportunity to wait at a bus stop for my own grandchildren. I'll never bake birthday cakes for them. I'll never carve a silly Jack-o'-lantern at Halloween with them and then tell a scary ghost story as the tangy smell of fresh pumpkin fills the October air. I'll never discreetly press dollar bills into their palms when I come to visit. I'll never be the recipient of macaroni-covered cigar boxes or Kool-Aid sticky kisses. Never ever.

I'll never have a grandchild to love and spoil because my only child, my beautiful son, has decided he's in love with another man. Forever and always.

Forever and always. That's what Blair told me sixteen months ago. It was the last time we spoke.

I had prided myself on being open minded, on being a free spirit, on being nonjudgmental about other people's lifestyle choices. All that went out the window the day Blair tried to get me to say I understood that he and Jim were together forever and always.

I hadn't known what to say. I still don't. I had stood in a hotel room in Fort Worth clenching the telephone receiver so hard my hand hurt for days afterward.

"Naomi?" Blair had said after a few moments of dead air between us. "Mom?" He'd sounded so sad, but I couldn't do it.

I know he wanted my blessing or at least my mantra of "I hear that," but I just couldn't give that to him.

Don't get me wrong, Jim is a great guy. He's smart, good looking, and dependable. He'd make someone a great husband. Some straight-laced, white bread, WASP girl. He's just not right for my Blair. I knew that Blair thought my biggest issue with Jim was that he is a cop, well, a sheriff now, but that's not true. One of my greatest concerns is how much older Jim is, how much more conventional he is, how much of himself Blair has had to give up to be with Jim.

Like children.

My grandchildren.

I followed the school bus until the last of the kids stepped off. The skies opened up a few minutes later. The grayness of the afternoon matched my mood perfectly.

Sighing, I swung the car around and headed to the nearest Denny's. I don't do it very often but I needed a strong coffee and a decadently rich piece of pie.

I sat in a booth by the window, eating the whipped cream off the top of my peanut butter pie with a teaspoon. The rain was really coming down now. Between the coffee, the steamed up windows and the comfortable vinyl seat, my spirits were starting to lift. Sandburgs don't stay down for long.

I watched a young mother with two toddlers waiting to be seated. She was a little rumpled around the edges in her navy business suit and low black pumps. One child was slumped on her hip and the other was scrunching the hem of her blue skirt with its tiny fingers. Both children were chattering like monkeys, demanding the woman's attention. She must have just picked them up from preschool or daycare on the way home from work. Despite the weariness on her face, she had a sweet smile and infinite patience for her children.

I can completely empathize.

I was that mom almost thirty years ago. I might not have been a business woman but I, too, had a busy, bright toddler and a full-time job and a heart brimming with love for my child.

I know Jim Ellison believes that I am one of the worst mothers in the world. He probably wonders why Blair even bothers with me. But I always did what I did, chose what I chose, with Blair's best interest at heart.

Hindsight is 20/20. Every parent does stupid things that should, by all rights, send their kids screaming straight into the arms of a psychoanalyst, but we don't mean to. I made the best decisions I knew how to with the facts at hand.

I understood from the time I was a small girl that I didn't want to be like my mom and dad. They were decent enough people, but they weren't like me. My dad was a second-generation German Jew. My mom and her family were fresh off the boat from Romania. They'd both lived in the Jewish quarter in New York City and had met in the synagogue, by arrangement of the neighborhood matchmakers.

My dad was a tailor by trade and worked in the garment district. He was, I guess, a good catch in need of a wife. My mom's family was dirt poor but she was a stunning redhead with good manners as well as a practicing Jew. She and Daddy married a few months after meeting. She became the perfect docile housewife. It didn't take me long to figure out that their life could never be mine.

My oldest brother, Saul, went to college, got his degree in architecture and ran as fast as he could to Texas. I'd like to think he turned out to be a better father than ours had been, but I couldn't help noticing that his own son, Robert, ran to Cascade as soon as he finished his degree in accounting.

My second brother, Jacob, was my favorite. He could charm the birds out of the trees. In so many ways Blair is like him. They have the same hair, the same eyes, and the same gift of gab. Jacob couldn't wait to finish college before he fled from Irving Sandburg's house. Jacob became a long-distance trucker straight out of high school.

He never married, never had kids of his own. He doted on Blair when he had the chance, though. My brother died of a heart attack when Blair was twenty-three. Blair was nearly inconsolable. "Why didn't he eat better, Mom? He should have taken better care of himself. All that crappy fast food he ate on the road caught up with him. He was too young to die."

Jacob's death broke my heart twice. Once for my brother, once for my son.

I wish I would have found more opportunities for Jacob and Blair to be together. Blair told me once that the summer he'd spent driving a rig with his Uncle Jacob was one of the best of his life.

Jacob, as infrequently as he and Blair saw each other, probably influenced Blair's view of himself more than any other man.

Until Jim.

As a child, Blair would run full force toward Jacob and jump, trusting his uncle to catch him in mid air. Jacob never missed.

The two of them would laugh as Jacob twirled Blair over his head telling the boy to fly, fly, fly. They 'd tumble to the ground, Jacob careful to cushion my boy's descent, gasping for breath.

My son confided to me after Jacob's funeral that his uncle made him believe he could fly, that he could do anything. I tried to instill confidence in my baby, but sometimes it takes a man to inspire a boy.

Jim gave Blair a confidence that still terrifies me. Jim running through the streets of Cascade, dodging bullets and jumping out of planes and helicopters and driving down the road like a maniac, convinced Blair that they were both invincible.

Blair isn't.

I don't know how many times he went through the Emergency Room and was patched up and sent home. I knew he had spent more than his share of time as an inpatient at Cascade General. I am sure there have been more that no one has been willing to share with me.

The point is Jim is a law enforcement officer. Blair is an anthropologist. No, he's not an anthropologist anymore, he's a teacher and that is partly my fault.

He told me he loves teaching out on the Watumsa Indian reservation. His life has changed so much, so fast. His once promising, brilliant career has been reduced to teaching grade school in a one-room schoolhouse. He told me that he loved teaching there but it didn't seem possible to me.

I asked Blair if he didn't miss the excitement of the travel, the intellectual stimulation of his life with Rainier. He sounded amused when he answered me. "I have all the excitement I can handle living with Jim now that he's the sheriff. And trying to keep up with forty-eight kids gives me plenty of intellectual stimulation."

He swore that it is enough for him.

Well, maybe it's not enough for me.

When you're a parent you harbor high hopes and incredible dreams for your offspring. When you're lucky enough to be blessed with a gifted child like Blair, you want to move heaven and earth to give him his shot at the brass ring. You'll do whatever you can to keep that dream safe, to make those lofty goals obtainable. And when the prize is almost within reach, oh, how you'll rejoice.

When it's your child's own choice to walk away from all of it, it's almost unbelievable.

"I did it for love, Mom," Blair told me when he'd declared himself a fraud. "I did it for love." God, how that hurt me.

What about the love involved in getting him to that point? When does your love, your unconditional love as a parent, the love you've showered on that child since the minute you knew he was in your womb, stop mattering? When does the love of another start mattering more? When did Jim's approval start meaning so much more than mine?

That sounded so hypocritical. I mean, I decided that my parents' life couldn't be mine. Why can't I accept that my life can't be Blair's?

When I was ready to go to college, Irving and Ruth decided a daughter didn't need that much education. It would only give her ideas. It was 1968 and they still thought I should marry as soon as possible and start making lots of babies. The whole world was on fire with change. The morals and mores of an entire nation were being smashed and rebuilt. Not in the Irving Sandburg house, though.

There, the father ruled the roost, the mother was his helpmate, and the children obeyed without question.

My brothers were already gone. I graduated from high school and was enrolled, despite my protests, in a secretarial school uptown. I would take the subway every morning and be back home in time for dinner. I worked a couple of hours each night at the kosher market at the end of the block.

As the weeks wore on, I thought I would die.

Then one day during the morning ride, I fell in lust with a lovely boy.

I was pregnant two months later.

I realized that I didn't love him, didn't want to marry him. I could not imagine my life as Mrs. Joseph Baiocchi. I didn't want to be shuffled from a closed-in, restrictive Jewish household to a closed-in, restrictive Catholic one. I was eighteen and headstrong and much braver than I was smart.

Looking back, I probably should have said something to Joey. Being the kind of guy he was though, I knew if I had told him, I would have become his wife that summer. I would have been as trapped as I was with Irving.

So, I squirreled away my lunch money and worked extra hours at the market. When my folks headed to Newark for a cousin's wedding, I made my getaway. I took a Greyhound bus from New York to San Francisco. Twelve days in a bus for an eighteen-year-old who'd never been any further from home than a New Jersey family reunion, was an eye-opening experience. The scenery outside the window was a heaven-sent treat for me.

I must have looked like the biggest yokel in the world, but I could barely tear my eyes away from the changing landscape. The green plains, the flat lands, the mountains, the desert, it was all new and wondrous for me.

I caught wanderlust during that trip and I've never been cured.

My seatmate changed a half dozen times on the way to San Francisco. The last one was a flower child, a petite girl who called herself Moonbeam. By the time we got off the bus, she and I were fast friends. She decided it was Divine Fate that we sat together on that bus. She took me with her to a big house near Haight-Ashbury. It was a commune of sorts.

There, as my baby grew securely within me, I learned about Eastern religions, philosophy, herbal medicines, meditations and free love. In short, I was taught everything my parents had worried I'd discover if they had let me go to college.

I'd found my niche.

Funny thing, looking back, I really was the woman Ruth had wanted me to be while I lived in the commune. Since I was pregnant, I wasn't expected to go out and make any money. I stayed home with a few of the other women and took care of the day-to-day. I cooked, cleaned, gardened and helped mind the children. I spent time making love with varied and terrific guys. I also liked to sit on the front porch swing in the evening and just grow my baby.

I recall sitting on that porch, swinging, watching the stars and fireflies come out as the sun went down. There was always music in the background. Either a stereo was going or someone was strumming guitar and singing. We had at least ten wind chimes hanging there. Back in those days, most wind chimes were made of painted glass, and they had a wonderfully brittle bright tinkling sound to them.

I'd sit there for hours, moving back and forth, back and forth, my hands on either side of my big belly. I might not have loved Joey Baiocchi, but I blessed him a million times for the baby inside me.

When Blair was born, Moonbeam by my side, I was blown away. He was perfect, just perfect. He was bald with those gray-blue eyes that babies have and he was wrinkled and blotchy and I'd never seen a newborn more magnificent in my life. I still haven't.

I always thought, even then, that I would have more children. I might have become a nineteen year-old free spirit by the time Blair came along, but I was still Naomi Ester Sandburg, good Jew and lower-middle-class New Yorker, deep inside.

When my life went on and there were no more children, I always thought I'd have my grandchildren someday. Who knew that at heart, when it came to children, I was a traditionalist?

Forever and always, Blair had told me.

The kids in his classes were his children, he'd said.

Well, the kids in his classes aren't my grandchildren, are they?

My pie was gone. I looked out the restaurant window and it was raining even harder. I motioned the waitress over and ordered some hot tea.

The harried mother and her two children were three booths over from me. I heard her tell the kids there were only two more days till Saturday and then the three of them would do something fun. Maybe the zoo or the library.

I remembered making promises like that to Blair.

He and I had lived in the commune for almost two years. It had been full of great people, but the faces changed frequently and, quite frankly, there was way too much drug use for my tastes. To each his own, sure, but I had an inquisitive son tooling around and I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't safe there for Blair.

I took a job as a night waitress at a truck stop. Moonbeam moved into the tiny apartment I'd found for the three of us. She took care of Blair while I worked. Mostly, she just watched him sleep.

I've never forgotten how much pain it caused me to leave him that first night. He stood in the front window waving goodbye to me. Tears were streaming down his round cheeks. I was too far away to hear what he was saying but I could see him mouthing "Bye-bye, Mama. Bye-bye, Mama," over and over.

I cried all the way to the restaurant.

In the years that followed I worked in a lot of places doing a lot of jobs, but I tried to keep working nights. That way, I could do things with Blair in the daytime. I could get him ready for school, nap while he was in class, meet him after school, help with his homework, make his dinner and still work fulltime. My baby didn't have a daddy in his life. I made damn sure he had a mommy.

Blair stood in the window or driveway or hallway of wherever we lived and waved goodbye to me nearly every time I went to work. Then, he moved to Rainier. I never imagined how much I would miss our ritual.

Taking him to Rainier when he'd turned sixteen almost killed me.

I was nineteen when he was born. No matter what Jim might think, my son was with me almost constantly until he went to college. Yes, I did flit from man to man, but really, those boyfriends just weren't that important to me. The only man that was a constant in my life, the only man that ever really mattered to me, was Blair.

He still is.

So, I had to wonder, as I ran through the rain to my car, why I hadn't driven to Pinecrest and talked to Blair months ago.

I was staying outside of the city in a little suburb called Sweet Haven. Moonbeam, now going by the unlikely moniker of Willie Annette, apparently a good Southern family name, was married to an electronics engineer. I'd come to visit yesterday, planning to be there for a week or so. I hadn't really made up mind where to head after that. Moonbeam suggested Pinecrest but I wasn't sure.

I really liked her husband, Bill. An ex-biker, he and Moonbeam (I just can't seem to get my tongue to say Willie Annette) had been married for twenty-two years. The biker and the hippy.

I supposed that was no more of an unlikely pair than the cop and the anthropologist.

I mean sheriff and grade school teacher.

What if Blair was right? What if he and Jim were really going to be together forever and always? Was I ready to lose my only child, my beautiful Blair, because of who he was in love with?

Moonbeam and Bill were still at work. I went into the guestroom, changed clothes and went to lie down on the bed. Moonbeam, yenta that she is, had left a large, framed photo collage on the nightstand. She and I had talked into the wee hours last night. She had listened without judgment to my ranting about Blair and Jim. This picture collection was her comment.

I had told her how, until the last sixteen months, no matter where I was or what I was doing or who I was doing it with, I never felt alone. I knew Blair was out there loving me, thinking of me, and sending positive thoughts my way. Just like I was doing for him.

Now, I had whined to Moonbeam, he had Jim to love him, to think of him, to give him emotional support. I knew he did the same for Jim.

I guessed I've had too many self-realization classes not to have made the painful connection. I was jealous.

The only forever and always bond I had made was with my child.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the collage. Bill and Moonbeam couldn't have children of their own, so Blair had filled a big hole in their lives.

My son had just turned eight when Moonbeam and Bill started living together. I was getting over a messy break-up so Blair and I moved in with them while I got back on my feet.

Blair and Bill were crazy about each other. The gruff biker basked in Blair's blatant adoration and the boy positively glowed under the one-on-one male attention.

The first picture on the left-hand side of the collage was a newborn baby Blair dressed in a lemon-drop yellow receiving gown that one of the girls in the commune had made for him. Next were pictures of a diapered toddler with sturdy knees and dimpled elbows clutching a beat-up stuffed orange cat that Moonbeam had given him. Mr. Rogers, I think Blair called him.

There were pictures I had sent Moonbeam over the years that we were apart, as well as ones she'd taken. A tiny, curly-haired, semi-toothless boy in tan corduroys climbing up the steps of a school bus. A proud ten-year-old standing in front of his winning science project. A gawky twelve-year-old, brilliant smile in place, dressed up for his first school dance with a date. A nervous looking thirteen-year-old, Grandpa Irving and Grandma Ruth by his side, at his Bar Mitzvah. A fifteen-year-old accepting his high school diploma.

I realized that there were some photos that I didn't recognize. They had to be ones that Blair had sent to his "Aunt" Moonbeam himself.

There were a few of Blair and I together in South America at various research sites. There was one of me sitting with Blair on the ledge of the fountain outside the anthropology building, him in his cap and gown, just after getting his BS. My heart squeezed tight in my chest at the next photo. Blair was perched on Jim's desk at the PD. Jim was standing beside him, arm casually draped over my son's shoulder. They were both smiling, both happy. I knew they hadn't been lovers at this point, but they could have been. They were sort of leaning into each other, comfortable in each other's space.

The second to the last picture was Blair standing in front of his one-room schoolhouse. It must have been taken not long after Blair arrived at the reservation. Blair looked beautiful, he always does, but he was solemn, sad. He was smiling for the camera but the effervescence, the light from within that is so much a part of him, was gone. How could I have not known how desperately heartbroken he had been?

The last and most recent photo had been taken at the reservation, too. Blair and Jim were seated on the top porch step of their white, clapboard house. They were caught in the moment before they could strike a pose for the photographer. The two of them sat close together, thighs touching. Blair's hand was cupping Jim's cheek. Both were in mid-laugh, eating each other up with their eyes.

I was an idiot.

Forever and always was etched clearly on their faces, in their posture, in the very air that surrounded them.

If even an inanimate object like a camera had been able to pick up on the intense love between them, why hadn't I?

So Blair had chosen to live a life as different from mine as mine was from my parents. So the career he'd ended up with wasn't the one I would have preferred for him. I wasn't working as a secretary or living as a housewife, was I?

Blair had found happiness and love and fulfillment. Perhaps he'd found his happiness and love and fulfillment in places I would never have looked, but he had found them.

I'll never have grandchildren.

I don't have to pretend that I'm pleased about that, but maybe I'll learn to be satisfied with being a surrogate grandmother to forty-eight Watumsa kids. Maybe I'll try my hand at being a good mother-in-law to the sheriff my son has committed himself to forever and always.

If nothing else, I knew I had to reconnect and be a friend to the finest man I have ever known - my son. It was time to trust his judgment and find a way back into his life.

I wiped the tears from my eyes, screwed up my courage and picked up the telephone.

He answered on the second ring. "Hello?"

"Blair, honey? It's Mom."



End Forever and Always by Rentgirl 2:
rentgirlsvids@hotmail.com