The Silvas Succeed, Chapter 3

Welcome one last time to The Silvas Succeed, the first part of the Silva Saga. When we left off, Sawyer was finished with childhood and ready for his teen birthday, and I tallied 155 points before his party. We switch back to Beth for the narration, with my comments in parentheses below the story.

I can't believe how long it's been since I completed a logbook. We've been so incredibly busy, and I've had a lot on my mind. Sawyer's birthday came all too soon this year. I can't believe how old he's getting. As he ages, I'm getting more and more worried about the little information I have about The Next Phase and what that might entail for my son. The thing I worry about the most is it doesn't sound like he has a choice in the matter. Sawyer isn't worried, though. He's filled with the confidence of youth, and I don't want to take that away from him prematurely with speculations. So I put that aside and we're going to have a nice party for Sawyer's entrance into the teen years.

My son is very handsome as he's growing up, though he has some elements in his face that don't seem to come from Enrique or me. I suppose these things can skip generations. Anyway, as he gets older, we're realizing that his early experiences with fishing have made him really love being outside. He's wanted for a long time to work towards being a master chef, but Enrique didn't let him in the kitchen much when he was younger out of concern for his safety. Now that he's getting older, he's looking forward to learning how to cook.

(Sawyer's trait is Loves the Outdoors, his first aspiration is Master Chef, and I plan on using him in the Apocalypse Challenge to lift culinary, so yeah, he's going to be doing a lot of cooking. Since he'll be doing a lot of fishing and whatnot in the apocalypse, I though it'd be good if he'd get a happy moodlet from being outside. He'll change around aspirations, but this was the first one I set. I thought that picking up the Essence of Flavor trait from this aspiration might make his endless fish diet taste better.)

I wanted Sawyer's party to be a surprise, so it was difficult to get guests. I didn't have the numbers for most of his friends, so we invited a couple of ours. We had to keep him indoors all day while we set up the party area outside. One of the guests never even came outside, though.

(This is the first party I've ever thrown in the game, so I am totally experimenting here! I hoped that Sawyer could throw his own party since he had all those friends from being a social butterfly, but no dice, so Enrique's pitiful two friends made up the party roster.)

She just played video games inside all the time we were hanging out outside. How rude!

Anyway, we still had a blast at the party. Enrique baked a lovely chocolate cake and we had a pleasant discussion over cake and juice.

I tried to broach the subject of The Next Phase with Sawyer, but he didn't really want to talk about it, especially at the party. I had to concede that was fair. I did ask him about his plans for his teenage years and he informed me that he had a lot of ideas about improving his skills and knowledge, as well as developing his personality. The first thing he needed, in his opinion, was some hair gel, however.

With his hair back the way he liked it, Sawyer said goodbye to our guests. It was a little nontraditional, but it was a great party. I think Sawyer especially had a really good time. He works so hard that he doesn't get to just relax and chat for hours at a time, so it was a nice break.

(The party was a gold medal, earning me 5 points. On another note, I wanted to talk about Sawyer's face. The upturned corners of his mouth are definitely from Beth, but something else odd has happened to his mouth. It appears to have crawled up his face since he was a child. Neither Enrique nor Beth appear to me to have a very high-placed mouth, so I'm really unclear on where this came from. Oh well. I think he's pretty cute still, and he's definitely a very smiley guy.)

Sawyer immediately got back to the grind however, working on his new, more difficult high school homework. Enrique helped him with it, as usual. Suzanna benefited from hearing Enrique's instruction, too. She was a very dutiful student as well, but no one in this family worked as hard as Sawyer. He soon was pulling in all A's again.

(Sawyer got his A at 11 days left, which results in 11 points. Although Sawyer had reached the 'breeze through homework' stage as a child, it seemed to regress a little when he became a teenager, so he needed to be tutored again. Poor Suzanna never gets help with her homework, however! Like a good aspiration point generator, though, she always wants to do her homework and extra credit.)

Sawyer went right back to his favorite hobby, which was fishing, of course. However, he had soon mastered it and decided that he would have to give it up for a while to work on other pursuits. I know he was particularly interested in starting to cook.

(Fishing is Sawyer's first 10-point adult skill.)

Sometimes I think Sawyer felt like he was outside the family some due to his constant search for knowledge, and that made him feel lonely. I sometimes found him studying while watching over his little sister, or wandering around the house with a book to find someone to read next to. I wonder if we are pushing him too hard, but perhaps it is too late to go back now. He has only a few more years until The Next Phase begins, whatever that may be. I hope they let him relax and recover a little.

We continued to supply Sawyer with potions to help him excel. Like the typical worrying mother, I started to wonder about the healthiness of such a lifestyle, but he suffered no ill effects. In fact, Sawyer seemed to have a nearly limitless supply of energy. Now that he was older, he too was committed to seeing the Initiative through and put all his efforts into developing himself.

(Sawyer is still downing moodlet solvers like crazy. Although I finally saved enough to buy him the fancy bed in the last picture towards the end of his childhood, he never used it as a teen. That's right: Sawyer never slept once as a teen. His parents and sister were pretty successful in their lives too, so they supplied him with all the moodlet solvers he needed. He also rarely went to school, as between Enrique's excuse notes and using his vacation days, he took as much time off as possible once he had earned his A.)

After reading some cooking books and receiving some lessons from Enrique, Sawyer began the pursuit of his culinary dreams. At first he was terrible. He gradually became more and more skilled, even reminding us that he was a reckless teenage boy by doing fancy tricks with the knives and whatnot. Despite the theatrics, the food he made was impeccable. We all ate so well during that time. It was like going to a gourmet restaurant every night!

(Cooking and gourmet cooking are Sawyer's other 10 point skills. I wasn't sure exactly what was needed for the culinary career, but I know both of these skills are, so I went ahead and let him max them since he was so close. Actually cooking meals builds the skill incredibly quickly compared to some other things, so the fridge was absolutely filled with more food than the family could ever eat.)

Sawyer even made fancy cakes for my and Enrique's birthdays. We celebrated at home. There was no time for fancy parties for us, but we had so few friends outside the house and lived such quiet lives that that was really just as well. For the time being, we had completely dedicated ourselves to the Initiative and to raising Sawyer to be the best that he could be.

I was very reluctant to have my birthday this time around, but my family tried to cheer me up with lots of confetti. That's fun and all, but who has to clean up all that confetti? Okay, actually it's Enrique, but he likes cleaning, so I guess it's not so bad. It did make the birthday more festive, so I didn't feel so bad about getting older.

I worried a little that Enrique and I would not be as attracted to each other once we were all grey-haired and wrinkly, but that was absolutely not the case. We still found each other as entrancing as we did that first day that we had met, all those many years ago. We just hoped, as were getting older, that we would be around to see the end of our part of the Initiative. It was disconcerting how much we still had to do, but we couldn't stop the flow of time.

On the weekends, Sawyer took on a small job watching various kids around the neighborhood, and then eventually got hired at a daycare center. It got him out of the house some, and it brought in a little money, but mostly it helped prepare him for more responsibilities. He enjoyed it, and it made me realize how much fun it would be to see him with his own kids some day.

(Sawyer topped his teen career with 9 days left, thus netting 9 points. Part of what took so long is I wanted him to get his A first, and then babysitters only work on the weekend. This was ideal as he was able to top the career in one weekend and then not work again for a while, but it did mean he had to wait until the weekend to start.)

Unfortunately, he was out working on a last-minute call-in when a coworker at the daycare got sick at the same time we had planned to celebrate Suzanna's birthday. He missed his own sister's birthday, but it was another one of the sacrifices our family made for the Initiative.

Suzanna was growing up beautifully as well. I don't write about her much since she isn't the focus of our project in the Initiative, but she is a very successful young lady as well, earning A's in school and being particularly talented on the violin. As a teen, she also developed a love of the outdoors, no doubt influenced by the big brother she so looked up to.

(Suzanna also has that very high mouth, so I guess it must be in one of her parents. I didn't see that when I was rolling their children in CAS, so it's a little funny to me that both kids ended up with it. On another note, despite the slightly funky mouth, I think Suzanna is lovely.)

Suzanna worked hard in school despite not receiving the same amount of attention as Sawyer did. It was not unusual to see that, wherever Sawyer had settled to work on his skills, Suzanna would be nearby.

(At this point, Sawyer was working on developing a lot of other skills. There were a few that were important to his life as an eventual apocalypse founder, such as handiness for all those low-level bathroom fixtures, but most others were just whatever was convenient. He would study a few levels in a book and then work on practicing the skill in action.)

Sawyer frequently professed different goals for his life. For a while he even claimed that he wanted to be a bodybuilder and worked out frequently! However, this seemed to drive him to try new things and work hard at them, so we encouraged him to explore whatever he was interested in at the moment.

(Changing Sawyer's aspiration to reflect whatever he was working on skilling was very effective in gaining aspiration points. Additionally, I'm not sure whether this is global or not, but for me the Renaissance Sim aspiration was 'sticky' - that is, he kept rolling wants based on it despite not having it any longer. This was actually quite helpful since except for the occasional promotion want, Renaissance Sims mostly want to skill. Back on aspirations, I tried to build as many as possible to the point where he had to 'become an adult' so that during those last few precious hours at his party, he would be able to get a lot of aspiration points for that. This is an area that I could have optimized even more if I had planned it out beforehand, so keep that in mind if you do a Wonder Child.)

Sawyer worked on so many different things. In the same day, I might find him playing the violin, working on a wood sculpture, working out, and studying books, all depending on his interests.

(I aimed for gaining a lot of skills until they reached a medium level rather than maxing a few. Any that he rolled wants for often got completed since I needed the aspiration points for traits. Early in his teen years, Sawyer had finally gotten the Savant trait, but I was trying to get as many promotion-related traits as possible to help him top culinary eventually. A lot of these were somewhat expensive, so if I had just been aiming for points, I probably could have gotten a few more traits.)

Sawyer was such a great cook and even got pretty good at mixing juice cocktails. It was very pleasant to come home from a long day at work to a wonderful meal and a fresh drink. Wherever Sawyer ended up next, I was sure he would be eating very well.

(Oh, if only that were the case!)

Sawyer's 20th birthday finally came around. I couldn't believe my baby was done with high school, done with learning so very much, and ready to move on. I hoped The Next Phase would be over quickly so he could return to us and we could approach this next chapter of life together.

(Sawyer was able to invite his friends this time, but they were still uncooperative about actually attending the festivities, rather than playing around in the house on the computers or motion gaming rig.)

As he had grown into an adult, Sawyer had become a very cheerful person. He loved learning, and he had the utmost optimism about whatever would come next. He still had a dream of being a master chef.

(Sawyer's final trait is obviously Cheerful. An occasional happy moodlet can't hurt in the apocalypse, right? I set Master Chef as his final aspiration without really thinking about it, but I kind of shot myself in the foot because he needed a silver dinner party for the next step and I never got around to that. I doubt he'll get the chance in the apocalypse to throw a dinner party. Grr.)

It was nice for our family to be together and just enjoy ourselves. Sawyer had baked his own birthday cake since by this point he had far exceeded even Enrique's cooking skills, and as usual, it was delicious. For once, we just sat around and talked about things that had nothing to do with learning, excelling, or working. It was so refreshing.

(This was another gold medal party, earning another 5 points.)

However, that couldn't last forever. We had received a call towards the end of the party that the Initiative was on their way to pick Sawyer up for The Next Phase. Ever since hearing about it obliquely when he was in grade school, I had never found out anything more about it, much to my consternation. I had asked every way I could think of: subtly, overtly, sneakily, bluntly. I demanded, cajoled, and threatened, but our contacts at the Initiative were firm. It was a secret. So, trying to keep things as light as possible, we said our goodbyes. First Suzanna hugged her brother and told him to have a blast in The Next Phase. Enrique and I stood by and watched our two beautiful, amazing kids interacting for what may be the last time in a long while. It was very bittersweet. Even despite Sawyer's quest for knowledge and fulfillment, they had always been the best of friends.

Then Enrique said goodbye. He tried to give Sawyer several last pieces of advice, many of which were met with an affectionate, "I know, Dad." Looking at the two most important men in my life, I was so proud. Whatever happened next, we as a family had come a long way from Enrique's and my first awkward flirts.

Finally my turn came. I couldn't think of anything good to say. Suddenly I had no advice, no final words. I was just overcome with love for my boy.

It took me several days to get around to write this, because I've been grieving the absence of my son and wondering if he will ever come back to us. All I could do in the end was tell him how much I loved him and how proud he made me. Maybe that was enough.

A black SUV with tinted windows pulled up outside and honked. Sawyer, full of hope and ambition, walked out to it, climbed in, and disappeared from our life . . . for however long it would be.

Enrique and I congratulated each other on a job well done. We had done everything we had set out to do, but somehow it felt kind of hollow. By all accounts, we have succeeded at the Initiative. Why then do I feel so empty?

I tried to tell myself as I was trying to fall asleep that night that this was just the beginning of an empty nest syndrome. After all, nearly all parents saw their children grow up, move out, and go on with their lives, and a little sadness was natural. The only difference was that they knew where their children were for the most part.

In the short time between Sawyer's birthday and this final logbook of mine, all three of us have been living our normal lives. Enrique and I go to work. I'm thinking about retiring soon. Suzanna is a senior now. Everything seems to be going as well as it could be, but I think none of us can really ignore the empty bed in Suzanna and Sawyer's formerly shared bedroom. It's been a long time since we've seen him, and there's been no news.

I hope that, wherever he's landed, he's happy and living comfortably, and getting to reap the benefits of all the hard work he'd put into the Initiative ever since he was a small child. That's all I really want for my son.

(Sawyer is, of course, starting an apocalypse, so he has none of these things, but no one tell Beth, okay?)

What to say in the final line of my final logbook? All I can think is: This is our story. The story of how the Silvas succeeded at raising a most wondrous child. But it is mostly his story. Sawyer's story. My son's story. I will love him forever.

(And that's the end! Let's start tallying up the points. Sawyer got 7 for his grade school A, 11 for his high school A, 9 for his teenage career, and 10 for his two parties. His four maxed child skills earn him 13 apiece, with 10 for the points and 3 for the completion bonus, for a total of 52. The above skills, with the three 3-point bonuses for completion, net him 100 points even.)

 

(Sawyer has 21 traits: 3 natural ones, 4 for childhood skills, 1 from his aspiration, and 13 that he earned from aspiration points. This adds 210 points on. His last action during his party was trying to complete a 100-point skilling whim to buy a more expensive trait, but he didn't get it, so at the last moment I bought a bunch of small ones like Gym Rat, Always Welcome, and Great Storyteller just for the points. Overall, Sawyer earned 244 points as a teenager.)

(Sawyer's final point total is 399. I'm pretty happy with this, but I think I could get a lot higher if I planned things out, so I may try another one in the future just for points. However, I think Sawyer will make a pretty great apocalypse founder, which was the goal I set out for in the end. If you'd like him alone as a YA or him with his family (as they were at the end of the challenge) you can find them in the Gallery. I added wrong, so in his description it says he earned 401 points, but I'm pretty sure 399 is the real total, unfortunately. It would have been nice to say I broke 400, but alas. Anyway, if you want any of these sims, search for my username, which is 22Taube - with a capital T - and you should find them. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this attempt at the Wonder Child challenge. Check back soon to see Sawyer survive in the apocalypse as the Silva Saga continues! While you're waiting, come hang out at SiMania or Boolprop with me! Bye now!)