I just feel old today. I happen to be old, so that’s okay—it’s odd the way a body feels old one day and as young as ever the next. Yesterday I was feeling young so I spent half the day in the garden. Perhaps that explains why I feel old today.

Ben’s been in and out since we returned from Metropolis just less than a month ago. He was silent the entire plane ride; I didn’t know what to say to him.

“So that’s why you’ve got all these pictures on the fridge,” he said when we got back to my house. He was standing in front of the fridge, an old thing I bought in the eighties. It’s plastered with clips from the paper, mostly the Daily Planet but a few from others as well. There are few articles that Clark has written, those get cycled out regularly, but the most noticeable thing on there is the multitude of pictures of Superman.

It’s still strange to think of Clark as Superman. He laughed so hard when he was first named ‘Superman,’ he came here for my reaction. I didn’t find it quite so entertaining. Actually, I was worried he was taking the pseudonym to heart. But he didn’t. We must have done something right, Jonathan and I.

And now he has a son of his own. Little Jason. I haven’t officially met the boy yet, but Clark has been promising to bring them down sometime soon. I should call him today.

Ben came over for lunch this afternoon, bringing the second biggest cucumber I’ve seen with him to put on top of our salads. The biggest cucumber I’ve ever seen was the one he grew a little over ten years ago for the county fair. He won a handful of prizes off of it—I’m not sure what he did with it afterwards, though.

Now we’re just sitting here in the living room reading—me the Daily Planet, him a science fiction novel as he’s partial to. Our peaceful afternoon is interrupted by a hard knock on the front door. We exchange a glance and decide to ignore it. The only people who come around these days are lost travelers, people selling something, evangelists, or neighbors wondering if they can borrow the tractor.

As it is, neither of us have ever been very good at giving directions, we don’t have any use for any more stuff, and the tractor has already been loaned out for the day.

“Thank you, we’ve already accepted Christ and we’re very happy with our vacuum cleaner,” Ben shouts without even looking up from his book. I knew there was a reason I kept him around—chuckling, I head for the front door only to see it already open a crack, Clark’s head poked in up to his eyes.

“Clark!” I say, startled— he usually calls before he comes. “Is everything alright? Why didn’t you just come in?”

“You’ve got company,” he replies awkwardly with a shrug and I can’t help but scowl at him. He knows this is his home and we both know full well that he could see through the walls and tell that we were just having a quiet afternoon reading. We’re too old for anything funny, anyway.

“So? Get in here and give me a hug,” I instruct. He smiles and comes into the house, leaving the door open behind him. I get my hug from him before realizing he actually had a reason to leave the door open; Lois and Jason are behind him.

“Hello, Mrs. Kent,” Lois says a little self-consciously. I smile; it’s good to finally be meeting the pair of them. “I’m sorry for just showing up like this—Clark and I ended up with the afternoon off and thought we should come for a visit. We were going to call, but then it was three o’clock,” Clark turns bright red at this point, Lois’s eyes darting over to him for a brief second before she plunges ahead. “And Jason gets off of school at three, so we just kind, well, Clark just picked up and left. Picked us up, that is…” she shakes her head. I wonder what has the poor girl so nervous. I glance at Clark—his blush has gone down and now he’s chuckling at Lois. Jason is looking between his two parents, not sure whether he should be as nervous as his mother seems to be, or if he should find the situation funny, like his dad.

“Hello, Lois,” I say simply, trying not to smile. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” I can’t help but glare at Clark on that note and he has the sense to look sheepish. “And you’re Jason?” I ask, turning to the little boy clutching his mother’s hand. He nods shyly. “Well, I’m—”

“You’re Grandma Martha,” he says, looking as sheepish as his father for interrupting, but as though he didn’t want me assuming he didn’t know who I was.

“That’s right,” I can’t help but smile. He’s such the perfect mixture of the pair of them. He’s got my boy’s eyes, Lois’s dark hair, and the beginnings of Clark’s wide frame, though he looks small for his age. He tugs on his mom’s hand and she leans down to hear whatever secret question he has to ask her.

“Of course you can give her a hug, honey,” Lois says, smiling up at me. My own smile widens when he takes a few tentative steps forward. I bend down with my arms out and his steps quicken. Adorable.

“Are you hungry? You must be hungry,” I say when his little arms relax. I don’t give him the chance to respond, taking him by the hand and leading him into the kitchen. My cookbooks take up the entirety of the bookshelves against the back wall of the kitchen. I hardly use any of them anymore, I know the recipes I like by heart, the same with the recipes Clark likes and the recipes Jonathan liked—Ben isn’t a man of habit, he pages through the books after something new to try every time I cook for him.

Jason sits himself down at the worn kitchen table, swinging his legs and watching me as I look over a few bindings for the right book. Finally, I find the old, battered red volume of recipes that have been compiled over the years. Clark gave the book to me for Christmas just after his eighth birthday, the third Christmas he spent with us. Over the years of his childhood, he and I filled it with the best sweets recipes we came across; I continued to add to it even after he left, after Jonathan had died. I didn’t have much to do during those long years that he was away—I baked pies, selling them to help pay for the farmhands I had to hire to get work done around the farm. This worn out little book is as full of as many memories as recipes.

I set the thick book down on the table in front of my grandson; he looks up at me curiously. I can’t help but smile. “This is a book your dad and I put together over the years,” I explain, sitting down next to him and opening the book to its first page. Chocolate chip cookies. The recipe is still splattered with dough from the first time Clark and I made the cookies. That was the only time I let Clark anywhere near my electric blender—Jonathan was never able to eat a chocolate chip cookie again without laughing. Clark added his own preferences to the original recipe in bright red marker, TWO BAGS written in his child’s writing in front of ‘chocolate chips’ instead of the original, much smaller, quantity.

Jason took over, then, flipping through the book with his face scrunched in concentration. Again, adorable.

An hour later, Jason and I are on our second batch of chocolate chip cookies. He looked at every recipe in the book and eventually turned back to the first one, asking if we could really add two bags of chocolate chips to the dough.

Clark and Lois settled in the living room to talk news or politics or something with Ben while Jason and I baked. The first batch of cookies was lost the moment it came out of the oven—Clark came in and pulled them out with his bare hands, making his son beam. A breath of cool wind and the cookies were ready to eat. They were gone in the first five minutes.

So we started again. “Clark, your mother is going to put our son into a sugar coma,” Lois commented as she bit into her fifth or sixth cookie. Clark chuckled.

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” he replied before their discussion resumed with Ben.

Another hour later, the three from the living room had joined us in the kitchen. Jason and I were still waiting on the final sheet of cookies to come out of the oven, drawing together at the table, when I noticed we weren’t alone. Ben was paging through a cook book—his habit when he gets hungry—while Lois and Clark riffled through the fridge. Clark already had a few things out, adding things Lois handed him to a pan on the stovetop.

“Honey, what’re you making? Let me cook—” she tried to insist, but Clark held up a hand, waving me off. I scowl at him.

“Spinach manicotti,” Clark said, making the pan sizzle as he sautéed onions, celery, garlic, basil, thyme and oregano in oil. A delectable scent wafted from the pan, covering the smell of chocolate chip cookies. The two smells didn’t blend well—Lois opened a window. “It’s easy, Mom, finish your drawing,” he smirked at the drawing I’ve been working on with Jason—he’d drawn Superman high in the sky over the Kansas farmland I added.

“I don’t know if we have any spinach,” I say, getting up to check the produce drawer.

“The recipe calls for frozen spinach,” Lois says, pointing to the freezer.

“I certainly don’t have any frozen spinach,” I say, almost huff. Clark and Lois both chuckle at my distaste.

“I’ll get some—we’ll need tofu as well.”

“Tofu,” I snarl; never has there been tofu in my house. Disgusting hybridized soy squares of mushiness, in my opinion. That’s right, I tried tofu. Clark mentioned it in an email—that’s right, I have email—before he left for Krypton. Apparently it was all the rage in the city. So I tried it to see if it was any good. It wasn’t. I don’t know how city slickers can eat that stuff. Now Clark’s eating it? I’ll grudge him an iron stomach; he can swallow a bomb without so much as indigestion, after all.

“I promise, you can hardly taste it,” Clark assures me before turning back to his pan and adding tomato puree and water mixture just handed to him by Lois. They make a good pair, I’ll give them that.

“The only reason you won’t let me cook is because I would never put tofu in anything.”

“Just wait and taste it,” he continues to insist. I sigh and go back to the drawing Jason and I have been working on. Jason is adding clouds around the flying image of his father.

An hour and a half later, the five of us are sitting down to steaming plates of this spinach manicotti stuff. Ben gives the blessing and then we eat. I will admit, it’s quite good. Especially for tofu.

“How long have you been a vegetarian, Lois?” Ben asks. This is when I realize there’s no meat in the dish at all. I can’t say I would’ve noticed if Ben hadn’t pointed it out. I raise an eyebrow at Lois, interested.

“Four years,” she replies as Clark leans over to help Jason cut his dinner into manageable pieces.

“Four years,” Ben repeats, shaking his head. “I don’t think I’d survive without meat for a month.”

“You’d be surprised what you can survive without when you’re put in the situation,” Lois said with an easy shrug that belied the weight of the statement. She sealed it with a glance at Clark as he helped Jason with his manicotti.

Clark met Lois’s eyes briefly, apologetic. Lois seems to regret having said it, though. “Or survive with,” I put in, gesturing to the tofu substance on my plate. “This is very good, Clark.”

“Thanks,” he says simply. We all go back to our dinners. I’m not lying—this spinach manicotti stuff is quite good. If it didn’t mean going to the store and buying tofu and frozen spinach, I’d ask Clark for the recipe.

“Would you like the recipe?” Lois asks, right on cue. I chuckle.

“Well, having this recipe would mean potentially going to the grocery store and buying tofu and frozen spinach,” I shake my head. “I would have to drive forty miles to get to a grocer that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen buying such things.”

They all chuckle appreciatively, Jason looking confused but laughing as well. The poor boy is spending his childhood among adults; I wonder if he has any friends his own age. And I don’t mean just in school. Boys are supposed to have other boys their age to run around the house with and break things. Even Clark had little buddies to run around the farm with—Pete Ross, for instance. Those two were like peas and carrots for the longest time. I know it was hard for Clark with his powers, always having to hold back; Pete was always goofing off, pretending he could fly when lying across the tire-swing, things like that. Of course, Clark couldn’t fly yet back then, but he did levitate in his sleep occasionally.

“So, Jason, how’s school going for you this year?” I ask to get everybody talking again, and because I honestly want to know.

“Good,” Jason smiles like he means it. “We only have a few weeks left; my teacher, her name’s Miss Welches, like the juice, she says that we’re going to make paper-ring-chains on Tuesday so that we can count down ‘til the end of school. Me an’ my friend Jess, an’ my friend Billy are gonna make ours blue, yellow, and red. I get red, Billy gets blue, and Jess gets yellow.”

“Why blue, red, and yellow?”

“Cuz those are Superman colors,” Jason visibly forces himself not to roll his eyes. His parents chuckle lightly, exchanging a glance. I wonder how Jason reacted when he was first told Superman was his father. I wouldn’t mind having been a fly on the wall for that conversation.

“Of course,” I say. “How silly of me.”

“Anyway—” he launches into a long tale about his friends at school. Jess, Jessica, apparently has parents who are divorced, living with her mom in the city during the school year and spending summers on her father’s horse ranch in Connecticut. Billy’s mom died when he was born so he just lives with his dad a few blocks away from the apartment building Lois, Clark, and Jason live in—the boys spend a good deal of time together. It’s probably a good thing that his two closest friends have interesting family situations. When they reach the bitter teen years they’ll have people to commiserate and complain with.

Ben goes back to his farm an hour after lunch to make sure none of the hired hands have messed anything up. I think he just wanted to give me some time alone with my son and his family, which I appreciate. Jason follows him out, Shelby on his heels; the two are still out in the yard playing fetch, Shelby glad to have a companion who doesn’t throw the ball clear to Illinois when not paying attention. Clark seems to be thinking along the same lines as he has a ghost of a smile on his face from it. I smile back at him and then we join Lois in the living room.

“So how are things in Metropolis?” I ask, having missed out on that part of the conversation when I was making cookies with my grandson. My grandson. I’ll never get tired of that thought.

“Swell,” Lois says, poking Clark’s shoulder before sitting down next to him on the couch. I chuckle as well, sitting in my ages old rocking chair but not rocking, it squeaks horribly when I rock.

“Everything is just fine in Metropolis,” Clark replies, acting as though he hadn’t heard Lois or the chuckles that followed. “Gang violence is down from just after New Krypton, almost everything that was damaged in the quake has been fixed up again.”

“Perry finally got a new window in his office,” Lois says, chuckling again. “He threw a party in his backyard and burned the tarp that had been covering the hole.”

“Jason wanted to have a similar party when the hole in our living room wall was fixed, but…” Clark trailed off, shrugging with a smile on his face.

“Everything is settling back to old routines,” Lois observed, shifting so that she was closer to Clark on the couch, knee to knee, hip to hip, Clark’s arm around her shoulders. They look comfortable like that.

“Any more news on that Kitty Kowalski character?” I ask after a moment, remembering the article Lois wrote just under a month ago.

“Not officially,” Lois says with an odd gleam in her eye. I raise an eyebrow.

“She’s ‘disappeared’ into Maine, close to the Canadian border, with the majority of Lex’s assets. She’s kept to her word so far, not making any trouble while she lives the high life. I think she’s told her neighbors she’s a widow who just couldn’t stand to live in her husband’s mansion anymore and had to get away.”

“She’s got a new Pomeranian and lobster for dinner every night,” Lois adds, shaking her head.

“Were you able to fix your Fortress, then?” I ask. Clark nods.

“I regrew the crystals, added some security,” Lois chuckles. “I haven’t been north since, though—there’re more interesting things to do these days than talk to the AI.”

Lois looks kind of smug and I can’t help but be glad that Clark isn’t living his life based on what the computer designed by his biological father tells him to do. First of all, Jor-El was from a different planet, no matter how you look at it. I’d never say it to Clark, but I think there are people whose opinions should matter more to him than a computer program’s, the AI’s, whatever. It looks like Lois might’ve voiced those thoughts to him.

“So Jason will have access to the Kryptonian information when he comes of age, then,” I observe.

“He will,” Clark agrees. It looks like how much of that information Jason will be viewing is still up in the air between them. I don’t know Lois well enough to guess at her opinion on the alien technology in the Antarctic, but the tension of the topic between them would suggest she’s not too fond of it.

- - -

The three of them leave late in the evening, Jason asleep on Clark’s shoulder. It was so adorable I had to make them wait an extra twenty minutes so I could find my old—Clark called it an antique—camera. We took pictures of Clark with this camera and it still works, I don’t intend to get rid of it anytime soon. Now I just have to find things to fill the rest of this roll of film with so I can get a print of that first picture…

I was surprised that Clark didn’t once leave this afternoon, it’s a rare visit when he doesn’t have to pop out for a half hour to save somebody around the world in some country I can’t pronounce let alone locate on a map.

I make myself a cup of tea and sit down to watch the news. Superman just put out a large fire raging in downtown Metropolis. There was a time when seeing my boy do things like that on TV would have me in a panic, wondering if he was alright, calling his phone at the Daily Planet and then his apartment if he didn’t pick up. I bet it helped his image around the office as a momma’s boy hick, but I was honestly worried about him. He, of course, was always fine.

He seems to be doing just fine now, too. I was worried about him right after he came back—he told me about Richard White and his relationship with Lois Lane. Then there was that whole New Krypton thing. Like many times in years past, I was packed and ready to fly to Metropolis the moment I heard the news. Ben came over right then, though, and I waited until I was really sure there was something wrong before dragging him to Metropolis to stand in front of Met. General with what seemed like half the population of Metropolis. He was alright, though. I guess I didn’t have anything to worry about with that Richard White either; Clark told me they still see Mr. White every now and again, that he takes Jason some weekends, but for the most part he’s overseas in the field. As long as everybody’s happy. Of course, I would be happy so long as my boy and his boy were happy even if Mr. White were completely miserable, I shouldn’t tell Clark that, though.

I sit back, sinking into the couch comfortably. The news has moved on from the latest Superman rescue to things more local. And by local I mean they switched off the national feed and Joann down at Smallville Media is telling us about goings on in Topeka.

Well, Clark got his girl and the world didn’t stop spinning, nor are pigs flying, but I allowed tofu in my house so hell might’ve frozen over. I think we’re going to be just fine.