Dear Diary: May 14, 2013

Holy hell! I'm glowing! Just when I thought nothing else could possibly surprise me, I was turned into a walking firefly! And to make things just slightly more interesting, Sue was glowing too. I bet that if we were to walk into downtown Hanover, we would light up half the town! Anyways, enough complaining. I had to really think about this. We both did.

After we had all walked into the house and Edward had taken our bags upstairs, about a half hour later, there was food available and Sue and I along with the wolves, Watchers, and my gorgeous granddaughter who looked more 14 then 5, sat down at the table. I shuddered when I did the math in my head. Bella looked over at me with a raised eyebrow. I told myself to cool it and just shrugged in her direction.

I knew that regardless of what Sue and I decided, our lives would never be the same again. I mean mine more than hers. She already knew the whole wolf and vampire thing. Granted the whole Watcher thing stunned her as much as it did me. Who could have guessed that these kinds of Gods......erm.........immortals walked this earth? Hell, who would have guessed my daughter was a vampire?! Just then Sue nudged me, I realized everyone was staring at me. I looked at Edward who was smiling though perplexed; Ha! Now he knew how I felt 98% of the time! His grin widened at that. In the time it took for the food to get ready, the Cullen clan had told me about how some vampires have gifts. They explained who from their family was gifted. I was not at all surprised that my Bella fell into that category. Anyways, Sue spoke up to get me out of whatever brain trance I was in:

"Charlie, eat will you? Your food is getting cold!"

"Sorry. I......I......... was just thinking."

"We know!" Edward, Corin, Keith, Michelle, Alexander, and Rogue said in unison. Then everyone laughed.

Having one mind reader is pretty creepy but having 6 in one room plus one on the way home from her honeymoon from what I learned......well I just had to try to keep my thoughts in one location.

"Yeah, good luck with that." Keith mumbled to me with a grin.

"Oh for Pete's sake, will you guys stop that?!" I protested.

"What's the matter now dad?" Bella said exasperated.

"They are reading my damned mind! I can't think anything with these people around!" I whined.

"Welcome to the family. Now you know how we feel." Jacob grumbled.

"Don't even start Jacob! You and your pack can read each other's minds too, can't you?"

"Yeah but, we can only read each other's minds when we're in wolf form and even then not everyone else's in a 2 square mile radius!" Jacob protested in his own defense.

The rest of the family, wolves, and Watchers were watching our exchange with great interest and were all grinning. They were having fun. I was so glad we were entertaining them......NOT! At that Corin grinned and winked at me. I groaned again and dug into my food. For all my bitching and groaning, I had to say Esme was a divine cook. It seemed like I ate 5 days' worth of food before I was full. After dinner we all gathered back in the living room, when the door opened and in walked who I assumed to be Peter and Amy; from the nod I got from Edward, I assumed correctly.

The rest of the family briefly forgot about Sue and I, and went to hug and welcome the honeymooners home. Then Carlisle introduced them to us. Peter looked a bit shocked by our shiny exterior but Amy just shook our hands, smiled, and welcomed us. Great, another mind reader......erm......I mean Watcher. Suddenly, Amy remembered something and said she'll be right back; she then vanished right before our eyes. Sue and I gasped. We hadn't seen that before. Alexander spoke up and explained:

"One of our many powers is to vanish in the blink of an eye. Beats walking sometimes, especially if you're in a hurry." I nodded.

Just then Amy reappeared with a wrapped package, a gift of some sort. She walked over and handed it to Rogue, then she said:

"Happy Belated Mother's Day! I told you we'd bring you back something." She then smiled and waited for Rogue to open the package. Everyone was looking on.

Rogue's hands were shaking a bit as she opened up the package and took out the box that was inside. She then opened the box and gasped as her eyes went wide. She put her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, they were brimming with tears.

"Oh my God! These are so beautiful. You shouldn't have. Thank you so much......both of you." She whispered softly. She then walked over to first Peter then Amy and gave them each a huge hug.

Then she showed us the gifts. All the women in the room gasped. In the box lay a jewelry set--earrings, necklace, bracelet, a ring, and a watch--of white gold with an Irish pattern in every little inch of it. The pattern was incrusted with diamonds. Even I said wow. I'd never seen anything like it. It was obvious even to me that though Rogue wasn't their mother in any way shape or form, that's how they regarded her, especially Amy as her second in command. It seemed all very precious to me.

Finally, it was dark outside and everyone was speaking amongst themselves. Sue and I decided to go to our rooms and talk alone about the hefty choice in our laps. Decisions, decisions. So up we went, glowing all the way. We sat down on a little couch in her room and were silent for a long time. Then we looked at each other and without even saying anything, knew what our decision was. We didn't need 24 hours. But what we did need was to see our children. We called down and they came. Leah, Seth, Bella, and Nessie walked into our room. We asked them to sit down. Then I asked them:

"If it was you guys who had to make this choice, what would you do?" Everyone was thoughtful for a long moment.

"It's a really tough choice dad. I mean you have to give up everything you know even if you do get to stay with all of us." Bella said thoughtfully.

"I want you to stay." Nessie said earnestly.

"I think you've already made up your minds, you just wanted to see what we would say, isn't that right?" Leah said shrewdly. Sue and I looked at each other. Then we nodded.

"Look mom, Charlie, whatever you decide, we won't love you any less. Being immortal isn't easy. You have to embrace it with every fiber of your being." Seth said wisely.

I took a deep breath and then said:

"We have both decided not to be Watchers. The reasons are quite simple for us. We're too old and too set in our ways to be immortal. Sue wants to follow her people's traditions both in life and in death. Neither of us wants to leave Forks or the reservation. We have a life there. As absurd as it sounds, we actually want to grow old. And though dying isn't going to be pleasant, we both want to see heaven. We hope you understand." Sue smiled and took my hand to affirm her resolve.

As I finished speaking, Sue and I stopped glowing! We were shocked for a moment as were the others in the room with us. I guess when you make your decision and voice it; you stop being chosen and stop glowing. Our children, save Bella who couldn't, started crying. But they smiled through their tears and hugged us. They all understood our points and supported us just as we have always supported all of them and would continue to. Then holding hands we all walked down stairs where everyone else was waiting. I walked over to Rogue who was smiling at us and said:

"I hope you aren't mad at us."

"Mad? Why would I be mad?" She asked surprised.

"Does this happen often then, people deciding not to be Watchers?" Sue asked.

"Actually, I would have been surprised if you would have said yes. Most people, your age that are chosen, say no. For the exactly the same reasons that you gave; it's quite normal actually." She explained.

Having heard that, I was satisfied. We both were. We could continue living our lives the way we want to and we knew that even when we were gone, our children and my grandchild would be happy and taken care of always no matter where they went. That was a huge point of contentment for me. And the other awesome part is that I stopped glowing!! Finally, back to being a normal non-shining human being! Just the way I liked it, the less complicated the better. With that we said goodnight and went to bed. We were staying in the same room which made both of us blush and other then Emmett being a bit obnoxious no one gave us grief about it.

And hey, I didn't need Sue's sleeping mask after all!

~Charlie

~Carlisle Cullen