Happily Ever After

95: Holiday Surprise!

November, 2026

Sarah (18), Lucia (11), Maya (38) and Carina (42).

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After the first month or so of being at college, Sarah began to get into a routine.

While her emotions were definitely still there, working with Diane as well as being with her friends allowed her to breathe a little.

There was beauty in independence; no one to judge when you wanted kraft dinner at three in the morning, or if you went out to the grocery store with your best friend and bought enough candy to feed seven people, and spent the evening snacking and watching Friends.

She still called her famiglia every single day, giving them the latest updates of her life as things came in. Sometimes big, relevant news, but most of the time random things that happened in her day... like how her calculus professor brought his dog Meatloaf to class one day, and for attendance marks, had the students fill out a one question survey that looked a little like this;

How do you feel about Meatloaf?

She's a good dog.

She's a very good dog, yes she is.

She's the best dog.

She is the Platonic ideal of a dog.

I don't like dogs, but despite my generalized dislike of all things canine, I make an exception for Meatloaf, because that's how great she is.

The redhead was happy to hear that her moms and sister were doing well, too. Lucia was adjusting to sixth grade, and this summer, would be graduating from elementary school. It was nearly unfathomable for Sarah to imagine how next year, her baby sister would be in middle school.

Seventh grade... where did all the time go?

It seemed like just yesterday that Lucia was five years old, begging to go for walks, for someone to play with dolls with her... and now she was going to be turning twelve in a matter of months? No... It just didn't compute.

How was time flying so fast?

With all of the course work that she had to do, Sarah felt like she was losing her mind... just a little. Sure, the work was definitely interesting, the power that each element or equation had in relation to medicine, but there was just so much work that it made learning feel impossible. The teen was buried in readings, lab reports, textbook questions, pop quizzes, discussions...

Consulting the syllabus for each class, Sarah had made a detailed, colour coded spreadsheet of which assignments were due each day.

It felt like a very 'clipboard Maya Bishop' move, but it helped contextualize things, and having the deadlines all in one place helped make things a little less overwhelming. As Sarah showed her moms the results of said spreadsheet over FaceTime, they felt overwhelmed just looking at it. It was pages upon pages of assignments, each of which required dozens of hours of work.

Maya was very glad that her time at the academy didn't require this many reports, essays and readings. Even her time at college had been a ton of dedicated studying, but she honestly couldn't remember work on this scale... But maybe that was the trauma block she had from her childhood talking.

Sure, even Maya was a nerd, loving studying and memorizing texts, but seeing just how much her eldest had to do... the blonde would take a pass on that.

Carina could definitely remember how her crazy university experience had been; the University of Milan was a competitive school where the workload was so intense, that she felt like it was on steroids. She remembered tons of sleepless nights spent pouring over textbooks in the library, or Gabriella quizzing Carina on medical terminology, diseases and practices hours before a big test, or how the Italian practically ran off of espressos, courtesy of the machine that she had purchased for herself.