Aliyah, Juliet & Zoey, Age 18

            September 15^th, 2035; it was a typical autumn day in the Washington, DC and Silver Spring areas. The original Shepard sisters sat at the patio table on the back deck of Jaylyn Shepard’s Silver Spring home. Before them in the spacious backyard were their respective daughters playing a bit of backyard water balloon baseball. Anyone else who would come across this particular backyard on this particular day and saw four thirty-six year olds, two seventeen year olds and three eighteen year olds playing with water balloons in the backyard of a suburban home to be a bit odd. Especially on an autumn day like today.

            Thing of it was, it wasn’t odd for the girls or their respective mothers. While the girls played their game, Jenny and Jaylyn were throwing back some cold beers while they watched the game before them. Jenny and Jaylyn were in their husbands’ opinions looking pretty damn good for being 65 and 60 years old respectively. But that wasn’t relevant today, what was relevant was that Jaylyn’s girls were now legally adults. This made Jaylyn as sad as it had made Jenny when the quads turned eighteen the year Aliyah, Juliet and Zoey were born. Jaylyn was quite adamant that her sister would be just as sadden when Kate and Kassidy turned eighteen the following year, but unlike her sister; Jaylyn still had her sons who were seven years away from growing up.

            With the girls before them Jenny and Jaylyn were feeling a bit nostalgic. In a few hours’ time the collective, the entire motley crew of NCIS dysfunctional-ness would be at a local karaoke haunt per the Shepard triplets’ wish.  Since they were babies, Jaylyn sang to them every night before they went to bed. When they were babies it was Jaylyn’s way of soothing the girls so that they would fall asleep but as they got older that had changed. Aliyah, Juliet and Zoey loved hearing their mother sing to them so much that they would purposefully be difficult when it came to going to bed over the years.

Jaylyn didn’t mind though since on some level even when she and Kasey first got together all those years ago and even after she had the boys, Jaylyn still considered it to be her and the girls against the world. Jaylyn and the girls were sort of like Lorelei and Rory from Gilmore Girls in that respect. So the time that Jaylyn had with the girls before they went to bed or when it was just the four of them over the years were more than precious to Jaylyn. They were moments that she would never trade in a million years for anything else.

So hours later the group had vacated the backyard and was now occupying the karaoke bar with the rest of the collective. The girls egged their mother to get up on the stage whenever the opportunity presented itself. They wanted Jaylyn to sing the song that she always sang to them. The song that she sung to them every night for the past eighteen years and the nine months she had been pregnant with them all those years ago. As much as Jaylyn was enjoying her daughters begging she could tell that it was starting to bother the others so she gave in somewhat.

Jaylyn told the man who was running the karaoke equipment what song she wanted and he had asked her if she wanted the lyrics on the screen in front of her but Jaylyn said it wasn’t necessary. With that the music started and Jaylyn waited for the music to give her the cue she waited for.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth makin',
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.)

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

Dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance..
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone)

           

The song ended and Jaylyn left the stage as quickly as she could. Her daughters were beaming with happiness and that’s all that mattered to her. A year from now the girls would be nineteen and away at college just as their cousins, Madalyn and Asher had done when they were the girls’ age. And when this moment came a year from now it would just be Jaylyn, Kasey and the boys in that big old house of theirs. Not that it bothered Jaylyn that come September of 2036 that she would be the only woman in the house, what bothered her was that her baby girls would be gone.