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Post by Dr. Nadine Richmond on Mar 25, 2012 23:53:33 GMT -5
Nadine had just finished mashing the potatoes, placing the finished bowl on the table. Now she went over and turned off the gravy, pouring it into her fine China gravy boat.
"Why don't we give them an extra minute?" she replied at last. "It gives me an extra minute to talk to you... I feel like we don't talk very often without arguing. I hate fighting with you, sweetie. You know that, right?"
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Post by Ilsa Richmond on Apr 2, 2012 23:38:42 GMT -5
Ilsa almost rolled her eyes, but refrained. She should have pointed out that she only argued with Nadine so much because her mother always seemed to be pushing the future and better grades and a good job on her. None of that was for her, and so they butted heads, a lot.
"I know, Mum," she said instead. "I don't mean to be such a pain all the time. I'm just making up for how perfect Lor is, you know? Someone's gotta give you trouble." She was joking, but she had touched on an underlying issue, not that it was anything Nadine didn't already know about her daughter. She hated living in Lorelei's shadow. She was the model child, and Ilsa would rather just run the opposite direction than even try and catch up with her.
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Post by Dr. Nadine Richmond on Apr 14, 2012 23:58:09 GMT -5
Nadine had always tried not to compare her two daughters, but it was difficult. They were just so drastically different, and what worked for one didn't usually work for the other. Lorelei had always been easy. She was the good girl, the responsible one, the sweet one. The only thing Lorelei had ever done wrong was performing magic in front of muggles as a child. Luckily, most of the children had been confused and scared off by it, and the one who wasn't, Duncan, became her most loyal and devoted friend. But Ilsa had always been so bound and determined to be the complete opposite of her sister in just about every way, and as a result, Nadine often had no idea what to do with her. Even her psychiatric training didn't seem to help, because Ilsa seemed to go out of her way to do the opposite of what was expected.
"You're not a pain," she assured her youngest daughter. "You're frustrating sometimes. But honey, I never said I wanted you to be like Lorelei. Your sister isn't perfect, either... you're just two very different people. And I wouldn't have it any other way."
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Post by Ilsa Richmond on Jun 14, 2012 1:50:32 GMT -5
(I edited)
Ilsa, for a moment, kept quiet. She liked being frustrating. She liked keeping people on their toes, making them work for it. Good or bad, she would be the one they remembered in the end.
She liked the attention. She was textbook in that all of her acting out was definitely a cry for attention. She would even make jokes about it. But nothing else about her followed any kind of mold.
"Maybe not. But you do want me to be more like her. More respectable, studious, future oriented. I just don't want to get to end the of ride and look back and think it was boring. You can understand that." She knew her mother would get that, that wasn't the question. Her methods were questionable, perhaps, but that was a battle for another day.
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Post by Dr. Nadine Richmond on Jun 22, 2012 23:36:19 GMT -5
"I don't want you to be more like Lorelei," Nadine insisted. "I want you to be yourself... I just want you to be the very best version of yourself that you possibly can be. You have so much potential, and I just want you to find a way to use it. But I also want you to be happy."
It just hadn't occurred to Nadine that what might make Ilsa happy was doing something that didn't really use all that potential that she saw in her daughter. It was frustrating, but she was trying to figure out a way to reconcile herself to the fact that Ilsa wanted something different for herself than what she had dreamed of for her children.
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Post by Ilsa Richmond on Jul 13, 2012 0:20:39 GMT -5
Ilsa looked pointedly, almost disbelievingly, at her mother. She acted more like herself than anyone she knew. She definitely had no problems being herself. Which lead her to think that maybe her mother didn't like her like she was. That maybe, if she took a breath and calmed down for 30 minutes, she might find a Lorelei deep inside, and that this was her true self.
"What you're saying doesn't even make sense," Ilsa said instead of what she was thinking, so this point was true as well. She opened her mouth to say more, but instead just let out a rush of air, a frustrated breath, and dropped her head back so that she was staring at the ceiling. She really didn't want to fight with her mom, but Merlin, the woman was making it almost impossible.
"Never mind, never mind. Can we talk about something else?"
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Post by Dr. Nadine Richmond on Aug 2, 2012 0:01:46 GMT -5
The strange thing was, it was actually only Ilsa who compared Ilsa to Lorelei. Nadine was perfectly aware that both of her daughters were distinct, different individuals. And Lorelei was not nearly as perfect as Ilsa seemed to think Nadine thought she was. Lorelei was sweet and lively and good and responsible. But she wasn't incredibly ambitious. She didn't take risks, the way Ilsa did. Whether Ilsa realized it or not, Nadine actually admired the way her youngest daughter plunged into things with both feet, with no fear or doubt. The problem was that she tended to plunge into things that were, in Nadine's opinion, beneath her. She had so many talents and if she put her mind to it, she really could do something great with her life. But she also lacked ambition. It confused her how Ilsa could have so much energy and enthusiasm and not want to use it to set the world alight.
But how could Nadine explain all that to her without it seeming like a criticism? How could she build her up, instead of knocking her down? Ilsa seemed determined not to understand. It was just too easy to undervalue herself, to think she wasn't smart just because she didn't get a lot of OWLs and didn't get high marks in her classes. But in a lot of ways, Ilsa was actually smarter than her sister.
Nadine rubbed her head and sighed. "What do you want to talk about?" she asked tiredly.
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Post by Ilsa Richmond on Oct 16, 2012 1:10:45 GMT -5
Ilsa recognized the tired tone in her mother's voice, and she was quiet for a minute. Conversations like these were just as frustrating to her as they were to Nadine. She couldn't seem to make her mother understand that he just wanted to experience things. She didn't have to be the very best at doing what she did, she just wanted to say that she'd done it. That when her time came, she could look back on her life and say that there was nothing she regretted, and nothing she wanted to do that she hadn't. That was what made her happy and what drove her.
She wasn't trying to be difficult, but she wasn't very well understood in this house, either. Ramon... he got it. He knew her spark for adventure and her desire to just do, and he catered to it. Once again, she found herself on the verge of spilling that she had a boyfriend, and once again, she swallowed the thought. Soon, but not yet.
"I don't know. I really don't. How are you and Dad?"
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Post by Dr. Nadine Richmond on Oct 19, 2012 23:11:17 GMT -5
It was beyond frustrating to Nadine that she could help total strangers with their problems, but could not understand her own daughter. For a long moment, she didn't say anything; she merely studied her daughter silently in the way that only a mother could do.
Finally she sighed and closed her eyes tiredly. Ilsa was a mystery she just couldn't seem to solve. Maybe it was meant to be that way, but it didn't make the situation less frustrating for Nadine.
"Your father and I are fine. In fact... there's something your father and I have been meaning to talk to you girls about. You know how we told you about the son your father had with his first wife back in Germany?"
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Post by Ilsa Richmond on Dec 13, 2012 3:47:52 GMT -5
Finally, the subject was off of her, and Ilsa could feel herself relax. Was that really so hard?
She sat up a little straighter, her attention on her mother as she spoke, and she nodded, having a pretty good idea where this conversation was going, but she kept her mouth shut in case she was wrong.
Why else bring it up, though, unless this son had mysteriously shown up? The idea excited Ilsa, quite honestly, and she was eager for Nadine to continue. "Yeah, I do," she added a moment later, hoping that this didn't turn into bad news.
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Post by Dr. Nadine Richmond on Dec 13, 2012 23:21:50 GMT -5
Joseph had rarely ever spoken of his lost son, even to Nadine, because the subject was too painful. Nadine had tried for years to gently try to convince her husband to conduct one last search, to try and find out what happened to the boy he had never even seen. It was only recently that she'd finally been able to convince him.
The girls, of course, had been told a little about their father's former life in Germany and the wife and child he'd lost. But Nadine had always tried to make sure they knew there was a possibility that the child still lived... if only because Nadine wanted them to think there was some hope in a tragic situation.
"Well, I finally got your father to agree to conduct one last search, to see if we could find out what happened to him. I don't think your father's ever really going to heal until he knows. Anyway, we hired these two private investigators to try and find him. They want to meet with us tomorrow. They didn't give any details, but they did say something about good news. It's very possible that he's still alive, after all."
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Post by Ilsa Richmond on Jan 4, 2013 0:25:51 GMT -5
Ilsa's jaw hung just slightly agape at this revelation. Her mother said it so casually that the importance of it could have been missed, were Ilsa not giving this conversation her full attention. Let Nadine never say that her daughter didn't listen to her.
It was perhaps possible that Nadine didn't understand the enormity of what she'd just said, but Ilsa doubted that. Her mother was one of the smartest people she knew, and she didn't say anything for the simple sake of hearing her own words.
"Mum, that's brilliant. That means he's alive." It was socially known that bad news was never given by owl, strictly in person. Besides, they mentioned good news... there was nothing else they could possible have to say, right?
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Post by Dr. Nadine Richmond on Jan 19, 2013 0:42:35 GMT -5
Of course, Nadine knew exactly what a big deal this was. Joseph had lived with the pain of uncertainty all these years, always afraid to investigate further because he always expected the worst. But Nadine, always hopeful, had believed there was still a chance. She'd heard about it in her practice... long-lost relatives reunited against all odds after long periods of time. Joseph himself was supposed to have died during the war, and according to some records, he had. Maybe the reports of the boy's death were also wrong.
The reason Nadine seemed so casual about it as she mentioned it to Ilsa was because that was often the way she approached things with her younger daughter. She kept her tone and attitude somewhat neutral, so that Ilsa could draw her own conclusions and react in her own way, without any positive or negative influence from Nadine. She never really knew just how much Ilsa cared about their father's other life back in Germany, since it was something so far removed from Ilsa's experience. Joseph never talked about it, and Nadine never was really sure if the girls really related to that part of him.
Now, however, she smiled, pleased to see that Ilsa did, indeed, seem interested. It had to be strange to know that she had an older half-brother out there somewhere, but Ilsa was taking it well.
"I believe he is," she said. "I suppose we'll find out more details tomorrow, but I'm sure they wouldn't have said it was good news if he wasn't alive. He'd be in his early 30s by now, I think."
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Post by Ilsa Richmond on Feb 16, 2013 12:02:46 GMT -5
Ilsa, in a rare moment of thinking exactly like her mother might, thought it was a psychological reasoning that made her so excited and intrigued by this news. It was because neither of her parents talked much of it that she was so intrigued, though she couldn't speak for her sister. It was information of a life and a time that she was just teased with, and wasn't it human nature to want to know more? Maybe that was just her... she couldn't count the number of times Ramon had playfully accused her of a being a tease.
Off track. The long lost family, right. She wanted this to be true, and Ilsa often imaged what her brother (okay, half brother) would be like. That maybe he was like her in some ways, and she wouldn't be such a black sheep in this family. She was loved, she knew that without a doubt. But she was also well aware that she stood out from the rest of them. Maybe this guy in his 30's would, too.
"That'd be ridiculous. They either have a very strong lead, or they've found him. What if they have found him? How do you even reach out to him? I want to come.... do you think Dad would mind?" she asked this, completely forgetting about that trip to Hogsmeade she'd wanted desperately to take just two hours ago. She was pretty sure that wasn't happening anyway, since she'd been sent home for the weekend.
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Post by Dr. Nadine Richmond on Feb 24, 2013 0:49:56 GMT -5
Nadine was pleased to see that Ilsa was so interested in this. She supposed it was mostly just because of the mystery of it all--a missing brother, a lost piece of her father's past. Ilsa was always curious about the things she didn't know about. She liked secrets and mysteries and things you had to work to understand. That was why it puzzled Nadine that Ilsa didn't like school.
But it never occurred to Nadine that Ilsa might actually be interested in the connection, and trying to find some common ground with her long-lost brother. After all, Ilsa didn't get along well with her sister, so it seemed like the very last thing she would want was another sibling.
But whatever the reason for her interest, Nadine was happy to see it. Joseph might have acted like it didn't matter, but Nadine knew that was only because it mattered so very much to him. He had given up too easily all those years ago, allowing himself to believe reports that the boy was killed along with his mother, despite the lack of evidence. Nadine didn't understand it, because she knew that she would have moved heaven and earth to find her child if she believed there was even the slimmest chance that he was still out there. And yet, she couldn't judge him for it, either. When he got out of the concentration camp, barely alive, he was weary from war and death and all the horrors he had seen. It was all too easy to believe what he was told, because it seemed almost impossible to believe there was any hope at all in the shattered wreck Germany had become. Nadine hadn't lived through what Joseph had, and she couldn't begin to imagine what it was like for him. The fact that he had survived at all was a miracle.
"I would love it if you came. Both of you girls, if Lorelei wants to come. But it's up to your father. I'll ask him. It's his son... his past. But if he's alive, it affects all of us. We'll have to figure out together how to find him and reach out to him. He might have a family of his own now."
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Post by Ilsa Richmond on Aug 5, 2013 1:10:51 GMT -5
Ilsa already had this guy all figured out in her head. It didn't dawn on her that she might be so far off base that she was only setting herself up for disappointment. The thought that this guy could be exactly like Lorelei didn't even cross her mind.
"Hey, cool if he has a family of his own. That means they're our family, too, right?" This might have been the most engaged Ilsa had been all afternoon, and for that, she was glad Nadine brought this up. As much as she loved the limelight, she became much more engaging when the attention was taken off of her. She could work a room with her lively personality, but when it came to talking about herself? It just wasn't going to happen.
"Please ask Dad if I can come. I'll stay out of the way. I'll even be quiet."
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