“Left Foot Red.”

They had planned to get the kids off to bed after the cocoa and coffee, but pleads from Charlie to stay up a little longer and cries of “what about playing Twister” from Vanessa delayed bedtime.

Instead of reading stories as they had planned, Jim was sitting on a solitary cushion on the couch, the rest still strewn around the floor though no longer resembling a fort of any kind. Acting as master spinner and referee due to his unfair height advantage, he was thankful to sit out as his back was already a bit tight, the byproduct of crawling around in a fort built to accommodate a 4-year-old Halpert and not the full-grown variety.

That left Pam to help Charlie to figure out which side was left as she craned her own left foot onto the open red dot on the plastic sheet.

“Is this my left?” Charlie finally held up his left hand after getting it wrong the first two spins.

Vanessa teased him about it until Pam confided in them that she too had left-right confusion when she was younger, a fact she’d never told Jim so she peeked back to see his face as she revealed another childhood secret. Turning back to face Charlie after catching Jim’s raised eyebrow and askew smile, she showed him the trick that helped her to learn her left from right. The fact that she still had to use the trick from time to time, would be discussed later as Jim now understood why she sometimes was late to tell him which way to turn when she served as map reader and navigator on their trips to new places. And why she often turned away from him when he asked. 

“So, you hold your hands up like this,” Pam spoke, folding down the last three fingers on each hand as she demonstrated the useful gesture. The one that has the L in the right direction is your left.”

“Daddy forgeteds his left from right lots. He makes a lot of l’s but he makes them higher.”

Charlie parroted his dad, bringing his hand up to his forehand to make the loser sign.

When Pam, Jim and Vanessa all laughed, Charlie parroted them too, giggling sillily without quite knowing why.

On the next spin when they all had to reach back to place a left foot on green, the three players toppled over, falling into a tangled jumble on the mat, Pam giggling like a schoolgirl, her face flush from the exertion. When Jim came up behind her and whispered in her ear, “we should play this game ourselves after the kids go to bed”, she smacked him playfully, the red hue of her cheeks turning a shade closer to crimson than the subtle pink it had been.

A number of rounds later, four more than intended since Pam and Jim were not practiced at resisting hands clasped in supplication, pretty pleases, and the kryptonite of their sweet voices and pleading eyes, they finally announced it was time to go to bed.

Met with a few more whines, they almost caved again, but the late hour and their grumbling bellies were just a touch stronger than the puppy dog eyes that these two were almost certainly throwing their way with full knowledge of their power.

Pam made a mental note she needed to work on her parenting armor and build up her immunity to doe-eyed looks. This would likely not be a regular gig but it was a good taste of what having her own kids would be like and how much she’d need to firm up her resistance before then. Good thing it was years away from now.  

After they finally were able to usher the kids upstairs to begin the bedtime routine, Vanessa insisting she did not need supervision to brush her teeth but Charlie did as he sometimes forgot, they divided bed time story duties. Jim planned to go with Charlie, Pam with Vanessa, but Charlie soon squashed that plan, demanding Pam be the one to read to him.

“I guess that leaves me on story duty for you, Snoop.”

“Oh, I don’t need a story Uncle Jim.  But if Pam wants to come in and say goodnight when she’s done reading to Charlie, I wouldn’t mind that.”

Relieved of duty, Jim gave each of his relatives a good night hug, wished them sweet dreams and returned to the main floor to start returning the family room to a state closer to what it had been before the night began, only half a disaster instead of the full-blown one it was now.

Pam started in Charlie’s room, helping him into bed and pulling a book from the shelf.

“This one good?” she asked.  

His head turned from side to side.

“Okay, not a fan of Harold’s Purple Crayon.”

It was her favorite growing up but Pam moved on to the next book. Holding up “The Snowy Day” she asked, “How about this one?”

“No, I want the pancake one.”

Pam scanned the shelves until she came upon the one he must have meant.

“This one?”

Charlie smiled broadly and nodded his head and she knew she had the right one so she pulled up the chair to the side of his bed and opened the book to begin reading.

“If you give a pig a pancake, she’ll want some syrup to go with it.”

Pam barely got three pages in when she looked down at Charlie to see his eyelids fluttering, fighting the sleep that was descending upon him but helpless against the pixies coming to taking him to la-la land. She read one more page and he was gone, off to feed pancakes to a pig in his dreams.

But Pam kept on reading. She was enjoying the sweet story and its circular trail, feeling a lot like the little girl at the end, exhausted but from all the wonderfully fun activities she’d shared with her little swine friend.

In her mind she once again opened her mental notepad, jotting down this book and author, knowing one day she’d want to read it to her own child.

Kissing Charlie on the forehead, much in the same way Jim often kissed her, she tucked the covers around him, turned off the light on the small nightstand and retreated from the room.

She had started down the stairs when she remembered how Vanessa requested she stop in to say goodnight too, just as she heard the child’s little call to her.

“Aunt Pam…”

Pam turned on her heels and made her way back up, taking a left when she reached the landing to visit Vanessa. Vanessa was already burrowed in the bed, the 6 Snoopy dolls tucked in with her under the comforter.

Pam walked up to the bed to say goodnight but Vanessa began talking before Pam could speak.

“I’ve heard my parents talking about how my uncle’s been in love with you for years.”

 Pam blushed as Vanessa went on. 

“and how happy he was when you finally started dating.”

“I was pretty happy when he asked me out. I was in love with your uncle for a long time, too.”

“So how come?”

“How come what?”

“How come it took you guys so long to start dating?”

Pam thought about Vanessa’s question for a minute. Sometimes she wondered that herself.  

“I’m not sure Vanessa.” Somehow, she felt since they were having a more adult conversation, it made sense to call her by her given name.

“I guess I just wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was feeling.”

“You weren’t listening to your heart?”

They may have called her Snoopy, but she had a lot of Lucy in her too. She wouldn’t be surprised if instead of a lemonade booth, she ran a psychoanalysis booth in the summer.

“I guess not.”

“But you are now, right.”

“Absolutely, I am.” 

“Good. Cause we love you too, Pam. And we want you to be part of our family, forever.”

She walked out of the room, her nose hot and eyes glossy with happy tears. It didn’t matter anymore that in 5 years of daughters coming to the office, she had never bonded with one of them. Tonight, she discovered that she was good with children, she had what it takes to be a good mother someday and she had the partner who knew it all along and helped her to realize it.  And with him came a family so welcoming and openhearted she knew theirs would be a life rich with love and a solid familial bond.

---

While Pam was upstairs tending to bedtime, Jim had tidied up and set up a little smorgasbord of snacks on the cocktail table. All the stuff she requested was laid out like a little picnic including the hummus and pita chips.  

“I still can’t believe you like this stuff,” he remarked as she grabbed a chip and used it to scoop up the creamy dip before she fell back into the couch.

“Hey, Halpert. Don’t yuck my yum.”

The house finally quiet, nourishment finally giving them a much-needed revitalization, they snuggled together as they watched TV, switching between Ryan Seacrest and Carson Daly and enjoying the fancy champagne that Marcie and Tom left for them.

“You know I was wrong when I told you it didn’t matter where we spent New Year’s Eve.”

Jim was a little surprised to hear this confession from her, especially now. The night seemed to go remarkably well. Pam was a natural with the kids, as he suspected she would be. They were pretty much in the same position as they would be had they gone to dinner as planned, back on the couch, Pam nestled within his arms, her head resting on his chest, his lips hovering inches above her head so he can plant little kisses on it from time to time. Sure, they were in New Jersey instead of Scranton but they were together, on a bigger couch, with a fancier bottle of Champagne and a bigger TV to watch the ball drop.

“I was wrong, because I didn’t know then that tonight would be so fun, so fun and so fulfilling and well make me fall even more in love with you, if that’s even possible. I can’t imagine any place I would have rather spent our first New Year’s Eve than here with Snoopy and Charlie Brown and you.”

Jim was barely able to respond, eking out an, “I fall more in love with you every day, Pam. And tonight, tonight felt like a week, but I loved every minute of it and seeing you with the kids was like a glimpse of our future. I’m a lucky…”

He was cut off by the clatter of the crowds on the TV, the countdown timer suddenly at :10.

Together they counted down the last moments of 2007.

“10”

“9”

“8”

“7”

“6”

“5”

“4”

“3”

“2”

“1”

“Happy New Year.”

With her lips still pressed against his as they rang in the new year with a kiss, Pam, having known since the car she’d have her chance to get him at midnight, uttered the word that had become like code for I love you between them.

  “Jinx.”