Generation 4: Part 15. Ten Reasons

Everybody seemed to deal with Flip’s death in another way. Cassie spent a lot of time on our brand-new piano, which was a little odd, since she had barely played any instrument before. Apparently she had now discovered that emotions could be communicated through melodies and songs really well. I loved spending my free time sitting on the couch, listening to her. Every now and then I recognized a piece of a song I heard before, which she then turned into something new, unfamiliar. Wow, I had never realized how musical my wife was!

What I did realize was that my children were suffering, too. More than one time I heard one of them sobbing in their rooms, but by the time I got there, they had wiped the tears from their faces and pretended that nothing happened. They wanted to be grown-ups about this, which shocked me a little. After all, four out of five children were still kids and therefore allowed to cry, weren’t they? I’m not saying that once you cross that age line, you have to pull yourself together, not at all. All I mean is that I can understand teens trying to hide their emotions, but not kids. Henner was the only one who opened up to me at all. The two of us, the only men in the house, stuck together.

Yet he stayed in touch with his sisters a lot. Those five were a real unit by now and I’m sure nothing could rip them apart.

Grace was the only one left out a bit. Since she was the only teenager, she couldn’t participate in the children’s games that much (I’m not sure she wanted to, anyway). Instead she focused on her friends in high school a little more, especially her cousin Marissa Pinkerton. Those two had been friends for a long time now, which was nice to see. And even if there was a fight, it was resolved after a few days.

I guess to some extent it was because she was family as well, but Marissa felt like a sixth child to us sometimes. Our younger ones got along with her great, even asking her to read something to them when they wanted to go to bed. Sometimes Grace got annoyed about that and asked them to leave them alone, but the kids didn’t understand that. To them, Marissa was like an older sister as well.

Unfortunately, another teenager around couldn’t keep Ivy from doing whatever she wanted, even if it included skipping school. We had hoped that having Grace and Marissa around as role models would keep her from doing that, but it didn’t work out. More than one time the police brought her home in the middle of the day, after she had spent the day at the local pool or near the cinema, waiting for it to open.

When we tried to talk to Grace and Marissa about it, they told us to back off. Ivy was old enough to make her own decisions, they stated. I couldn’t believe them – Ivy was still a kid and apparently not able to take care of herself yet! But it seemed like those two were too busy with themselves to care about our family, something that really shocked me. Grace had always been the reliable one and now she started to push us away.

The day she went to prom, she didn’t even present herself to us, but just rushed past us instead. Was the pressure that we had put on her too much now? Did we ask for too much? All of a sudden it seemed like we didn’t know her anymore. That way it came as an even bigger surprise when we found out who she had been at prom with – Marissa! And not only as friends, but as a date. Something had happened in the last weeks, something that we had missed altogether. They had grown closer and at some point their friendship had turned into a romance. Before we knew it, people were talking all over town about the new teen couple they found making out everywhere.

Both Cassie and I were really sad that Grace didn’t tell us anything about it. Didn’t she want us in our lives anymore? That was something we thought about a lot. Our kids noticed that we weren’t doing as well as usual and tried to cheer us up. That was really sweet, but didn’t make up for the fact that we seemed to have lost our oldest daughter.

Author's Notes: I'm back! Sorry I didn't post anything in the last few weeks and even stopped commenting your blogs, but the last weeks were somewhat strange. There was a lot of stuff I had to deal with, leaving me with less energy for the computer and writing than I had thought. I'm still not quite fine again, but at least I came back. And I promise that I will comment on your last chapters the next days!

Well, what can I say. Ivy once again showed that she was a difficult character to deal with, just like Grace, who started her mood swings out of nowhere. And she actually went to prom with her cousin Marissa - who she now is going steady with. I wanted to ask my game what the heck it thought it was doing, but I figured it wouldn't answer me anyway. I'm not sure if you even can date family at all in Sims? If not, that will mean that Grace won't have another partner until I kick her out, because then they won't be able to interact romantically, but she still wouldn't want to break up. Sigh.

Chapter title: An amazing song I heard live last night, by a really great German/british band called Ben Galliers. My choir's last pianist is in it (and he is sooo gorgeous!), which is how I know the band. Last night there was a festival on campus where I saw them for the first time. (Check them out on Youtube - you should find them if you enter "Ben Galliers Ten Reasons". And look out for the pianist ;) ) 

This song is really great and I chose it for this chapter because there are some reasons to love kids like Grace or Ivy, but also some to "hate" them every now and then.