History
Once upon a time, in the grey and dreary town of Basildon, England, a baby girl with a shock of dark hair was born in the creaky upstairs bedroom of her grandparents house. Nicola Mae Woodworth arrived nearly a month early, but when she entered the world with a screech of protest, she was surprised the doctors with how robust and ruddy she was. And she was vocal for a preemie; her mother likes to say that Nicola spent the first month of her life screaming, and the second month sleeping it off. Rinse and repeat for the first year, almost.Nic's childhood was a happy one. Her parents adored her, and doted on her without spoiling her. When she was eight, her sister Imogen was born, and to little girl this sweet, pink baby was brought here for her. Gennie was a doll for her to play with. There was no sibling rivalry, no bickering, and the Woodworth house was a happy and quiet one. It was noted on several occasions that Gen didn't scream the way Nicola did, and thank god for that.
Life was perfect... until it wasn't. Nearly sixteen, Nicola was a busy young woman, juggling as active a social life as she could while still taking a twelfth year English course, and studying for the GCSE. She had a boyfriend, a sweet boy who lived across the street, and walked her home from school each day. For a teenager, the age where everyone was meant to feel miserable, Nic was surprisingly happy. She still enjoyed the company of her parents, and was outstandingly patient with Imogen when the little girl, whose colour had changed over time from the white innocence of babyhood to a rosey pink, would come to her bedroom when Nicola was meant to be studying. She was always quick to paint her sister's nails, or help her mother with dinner, or go for a bicycle ride with her father. Life really couldn't get better. Until the day that her father came home from work, looking tired and pale. And for some reason, something just felt wrong to Nic. Though she couldn't explain why exactly, a stab of fear so acute it actually hurt rocked Nicola, and she spent the rest of that afternoon and evening practically glued to her father's side. She asked him a hundred times if he was feeling well, and was always assured that he was fine. He was just tired, it had been a long day at the office. That night, after Alister had gone to bed early, Nic sat up in bed, too shaken to sleep. She sat there, holding an old doll her father had gotten for her when she was six, watching the colour of the sky outside her window change. She sat there until she heard her mother's panicked voice, down the hall. It was half four in the morning when Alister suffered a heart attack that killed him before the paramedics could get there.
After a long, hellish day full of telephone calls, tears, and neighbours bringing over casseroles and boxes of cakes, Elaine and her daughters sat in silence in the kitchen. Every so often, one of them would make a remark about how Daddy wouldn't want them to be sad, or recalling a happy memory of him, and after tearful laughter, or just tears, they would fall silent again. And unfortunately for all three of them, that silence spread. Like a puddle of spilled liquid, it soaked into the family that was suddenly short one member. The women of the Woodworth family stopped talking to each other. They spoke, of course, but they stopped communicating. Each of them were nursing a hurt so acute it was actually physically painful, and none of them knew how to deal with it aside from letting it fester and eat away at them. But, like so many situations, there was a breaking point, and it came when Nicola found her father's old planner while cleaning the den, and seeing his spidery handwriting made her think of countless nights he spent with her, helping her with her homework. Her grief came at her in waves, and when Elaine and Imogen returned from shopping, they found the girl sitting in Alister's favourite old recliner, weeping. Grocery bags were dropped in the foyer, and the entire family huddled into that big chair that smelt faintly of cigarettes and bacon crisps, crying together. It was the beginning of the Woodworth's healing process. After that, peace began to return to Nicola's life, though she would forever mourn her father. His passing left a dark spot on soul, one that would not be erased any time soon.
The rest of secondary school passed by with no further results. Her mother had begun working, and found that she quite enjoyed not being a stay-at-home mum. Imogen was like a beacon of light and happiness, and had a different house to spend time at after school each day, and a new best friend every week. Nicola's smile had lost the sadness that had lingered there since her father's death. She had begun tending his beloved vegetable patches in the garden, and found that she quite enjoyed working with her hands in the dirt. By the time she was eighteen and ready to sit her A-Levels, she was a vivacious, happy woman who was looking forward to university, and moving on to the next step of her life. And while she was sad to leave her mum and sister, she had been accepted to the University of Manchester. And she was excited to move on to the next stage of her life. So it was with many tearful hugs and promises to write and call that Nicola piled into her beaten up Honda and began the four hour drive that symbolized the start of her new life.
Nicola had known that she wanted to be a teacher for several years, so she began the grueling process of getting her degree. There was more than one occasion where she would be in the university library, scrambling to finish a paper that she had put off for too long, and all she wanted to do was give up. The memory of her father was a constant inspiration, because if she had ever told him that she wanted to give up on something, he would level a look on her that said more than words ever could. And so she toughed it out. And the friends that she met on campus more than made up for the occasional coffee fueled all-nighter in the library. It was one of the girls in her small circle of close friends that put the idea of teaching abroad in her head. After all, she reasoned over coffee one day, they always talk about needing teachers in the States. To say nothing of the fact that Americans loved British accents. And while she had giggled with the rest of the group, that had planted a seed in her mind. What if she did travel to find a teaching job. What if she weren't trapped in grey, dreary England for the rest of her days? What if she went out and had an adventure?
Of course, it wasn't as simple as just jumping on a plane and going to America. She had to jump through a circus' worth of hoops to get her visa, including making sure she had a job lined up in the States. And so, after successfully getting her Bachelor's degree in Psychology, she planned a trip to the States. To pacify her mother, who was rather tearful at the thought of her baby living halfway across the world, she bought three tickets, and made it a family trip. Not sure where to start, she picked a state at random, deciding she would start there. Not wanting to overwhelm herself, she bypassed the major cities like New York and Los Angeles, instead settling on Quincy, Illinois.
The three of them made it across the pond unscathed, for the most part. And while Quincy was not loud, or terribly exciting, or anything very special at all, she fell in love immediately. While her mum and sister were at a local museum, Nicola began looking into teaching jobs in the area. The stars were in her favour, it would seem, because the third school she went to was looking for a fourth grade teacher. She spent a good portion of the rest of their vacation applying for the job, attending interviews, and finding out the channels to go through in order to get her working visa. She managed to enjoy most of the trip, but found herself on complete edge, waiting to hear if she'd gotten the job. Because Illinois felt right to her. She couldn't explain it exactly, but it felt like it could very well be home, some day. Like there was something there waiting for her.
The trip home was a sombre one, because for the first time in her life, Nic didn't want to go back to England. The USA was like a beautiful song that she had never heard before, but she wanted so badly to learn. But she moved forward with her plans to relocate, determined to get back there as soon as she could. She spent most of the rest of her time in England either packing, filling out paperwork, or consoling her mother, who was desolate to be 'losing her baby'. It took both Woodworth girls to talk her down from her ledge, Imogen politely (and then not so politely) reminding her that she wasn't going anywhere. Nicola promised to write to them, to call at least once a week, and to come back for important holidays, and eventually Elaine stopped calling her ungrateful for leaving. It was as good as it would get, and Nic had a bounce in her step when she boarded the plane, once more, for the long trip from London to Illinois.
Though she was eager to get out and begin teaching immediately, it took some time before she found a job in the education system. Desperate for money, because she didn't want to let down her roommate - a sweet woman named Jaclyn who Nic had met through a Craigslist ad -, she found a job at a grocery store that at least paid the bills, and applied for any and all teaching positions she could, picking up the occasional substitute shift for this school or that, all over the lower mainland. She was twenty-four. And it wasn't until she was twenty-six that she finally got a job -- a substitute job, mind you -- at Dewey Elementary School. One of the teachers was going on maternity leave, and would be gone the last three months of the school year. It was a forth grade class, and Nicola was over the moon. A job as long as that would definitely help her find something permanent.
And it did. That July, just as she was getting ready to go to her job at the grocery store, she got a call. Would she be willing to come on at Dewey as a permanent teacher? They needed someone for fifth grade. Fighting the urge to shriek and possibly deafen the poor man calling to offer her the job, she settled for jumping up and down a few times before accepting, her voice shivering with excitement. She managed not to scream until she was off the phone, giving her poor roommate an unfortunate blast right in the ear as she was coming around the corner.
Having a permanent teaching job made Nicola happier than she could remember being in a long time. She adored her students, and they were generally fond of her as well. Her accent seemed to amuse them, and they asked her endless questions about England, which she was happy to answer. It was tiring work, and she often had to bring stacks of tests, essays, and math homework home to grade, but she did so joyfully, with her feet up on the coffee table.
She had barely been there a semester when she began to notice Alex. When he came into the staff room, it seemed to get warmer. His laugh filled her with butterflies, and once they were leading their respective classes back from an assembly in the gym, and he laughed at something she said and touched her arm. Her students asked why she was blushing for the next hour. She spent what felt like an eternity hoping that he would ask her out, and when he finally did her head swam with happiness and she almost forgot to actually answer him. But they clicked immediately, and she knew after they'd been dating for a couple of weeks that he was the one. He was warm, the way he acted with his students melted her heart, and his Scots accent did funny things to certain parts of her anatomy. All too soon, some of her more astute students began to take notice of how they would stand close to each other during assemblies, or fire drills, letting their fingers brush together ever so briefly. "Miss. Woodworth is in loooo~oo~ooove!" they would crow joyfully, and Nic would have to try to keep from smiling too widely as she admonished them.
But she was in love. And when he brought her home to meet his family over the holidays, she quickly came to love them as well Her own small family, consisting of her sister and her mum, couldn't hold a candle to the loudness and brightness and excitement of Alex's three siblings and his parents. And they welcomed her into their crazy fold immediately, which made Nic glow with happiness. She flew back to England for the second week of winter break, and told her mum and sister that she had found the man she was going to marry.
And marry him she did, on the first of May, four years after they met over the coffee machine in the teacher's lounge. They've been married for almost three years, have a one-year-old baby girl named Sorcha, are expecting their second baby in January, and are so disgustingly happy it had caused people to raise eyebrows at each other, roll their eyes, or outright comment on how horrible they are to be around. And Nicola could not physically be happier.
