(June 17, 2026)
The Adventures of the Little Lovelies - Backyard Edition
The Planet of Remembering
Psalm was still on summer job hours — opening shift, which meant she left the house at 4:30 a.m. with her apron on backwards and came home smelling like vanilla syrup. She’d made everyone promise to “record everything in landscape mode.”
That left the home team: Bitty, Dassah, Ocean, Harbor, Nation, Go-Diddy, and Mom Brandy, who insisted on coming this time because “someone has to bring snacks that aren’t floop fruit.”
It was Saturday. The Stargate behind Ervin’s old fort was still covered with branches, but the leaf whistles from the Whispering Woods were tucked into everyone’s pockets, glowing faintly whenever someone got nervous.
Ocean had his notebook open to a fresh page. “Hypothesis: we have not yet visited a non-hostile, high-nostalgia planet.”
Harbor was already on the ground with his pillow. “Hypothesis: I’m going to fall asleep.”
Nation zipped up his G-Soccer hoodie and muttered, “Big Daddy would bring extra water,” then immediately said, louder, “I said… big daddy-long-legs spider! For science!”
Nobody was fooled. Go-Diddy just handed him a water bottle.
Bitty pulled the old planet list out of Dad’s toolbox. Most of them were crossed off now — Moink, Chocolate Rivers, Mt. Cheeks, Whispering Woods. Near the top, in very neat adult handwriting that wasn’t any of the kids’, it said:
P7X-MEM – “The Remembering Field. Only go with family.” – Mom
Mom Brandy blinked. “I wrote that? I don’t remember writing that.”
Go-Diddy grinned. “You wrote it after Baby Judah. You said if we ever found it again, we should bring the littles.”
The air got quiet for a second. Bitty reached over and held Mom’s hand. Dassah leaned against her leg.
“Then we go together,” Mom said softly.
Go-Diddy dialed. Seven chevrons locked slower than usual, like the gate was thinking about it. The wormhole opened not with a kawoosh but with a soft sigh, pearly white.
“Thirty minutes,” Dad said. “Stay together. If anything feels too big, we hold hands. Lovely Law #1.”
They stepped through.
P7X-MEM
They didn’t land on ground. They landed on soft grass that gave a little, like a trampoline. Above them, the sky wasn’t a sky at all — it was full of bubbles.
Thousands of clear glass bubbles, floating lazily, each about the size of a beach ball. Inside each one, light moved. Like a little movie playing.
The air smelled like old books and laundry fresh from the dryer.
“Whoa,” Ocean whispered, already sketching. “Memory spheres. Light-based storage.”
Harbor reached up and poked one low enough to touch. It wobbled, then brightened.
Inside it, they saw a kitchen in Wasilla. A younger Go-Diddy holding a baby with yellow yarn hair — Baby Judah — laughing while Mom Brandy tried to take a picture and kept getting a thumb in the frame.
Mom gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “That’s her. That’s my girl.”
Bitty stared. “That’s Baby Judah?”
Mom nodded, tears already there but smiling. “She loved when your dad made airplane noises. She’d giggle until she hiccupped.”
She didn’t cry sad. She just watched, holding Dassah’s hand tight. “She’s in a good place. But I’m glad I get to remember her here, too.”
Dassah tugged another bubble down. Inside it: Ervin, maybe 14, in the very fort they’d found, hammering a board while a teenage Kaylee held the nails and rolled her eyes. He looked right at the camera and said, “If you’re watching this, it’s yours now.”
“That’s our oldest brother!” Bitty yelled.
Nation pulled down a bubble and laughed out loud. Inside: a 7-year-old Nation in too-big snow boots, falling on his face in the yard, then popping up yelling “BIG DADDY WATCH THIS!” to a teenage boy with a video game controller — Big Daddy, younger, catching him.
Nation didn’t try to cover it this time. “I miss him so much,” he said, quiet. “He taught me how to play G-Soccer in the motorhome when it was raining.”
Harbor put his arm around him. “We’ll call him tonight. Again.”
Harbor’s bubble was next. He was nervous to touch one, but Ocean nudged it toward him. Inside: Harbor, age 6, fast asleep on the couch with Rowdy the barking mouse curled on his chest, both snoring. Go-Diddy covering them with a blanket and whispering, “My couch growth.”
Harbor snorted. “I was cute.”
“Still are,” Mom said, kissing his head.
Then the wind changed.
A low tone rolled across the field, and the bubbles started moving faster. Bumping into each other. One popped near Ocean with a soft plink, and the memory inside — Psalm learning to ride a bike — scattered like glitter and was gone.
“Oh no,” Ocean said, pulling out his notebook like it could help. “Kinetic destabilization.”
Another bubble wobbled toward Dassah, too fast. Go-Diddy lunged and caught it, but three more were coming, and the field was getting crowded, like the memories were trying to get their attention all at once.
It was a little scary. The sky was full of rushing light. Bitty grabbed Dassah. Dassah grabbed Harbor. Harbor grabbed Nation. Nation grabbed Ocean. Ocean grabbed Mom. Mom grabbed Dad. The chain.
“Close your eyes!” Go-Diddy shouted over the wind. “Hold the whistles!”
They all pulled out their leaf whistles from the Whispering Woods and blew. No sound — but the blue light pulsed.
The bubbles slowed. They stopped bumping. They hovered, listening.
Bitty, shaking a little, started singing. Not loud. The Jeffrey song.
“Come on Jeffrey, you can do it, pave the way, put your back into it…”
Harbor joined, then Dassah, then Nation, then Ocean, then Mom, then Dad. Their voices weren’t perfect, but they were together.
The bubbles drifted down, gentle now, and settled around them like they were sitting in a circle of nightlights.
One last big bubble floated down right into the middle of their huddle. Inside it: all of them, right now, on this planet, holding hands in a circle, singing. From above, like someone was watching.
Ocean’s mouth fell open. “It’s recording us. The planet remembers us remembering.”
Mom started laughing through tears. “That’s the most Mom thing I’ve ever seen.”
They stayed until Go-Diddy’s watch beeped. Thirty minutes.
Before they left, each of them touched one bubble to take with them — not to keep, just to remember. Mom chose Baby Judah’s laugh. Nation chose Big Daddy catching him. Harbor chose him and Rowdy napping. Ocean chose Ervin building the fort. Bitty and Dassah together chose the one of all of them singing.
They stepped back through the gate holding hands, and tumbled out onto the moss in Wasilla just as the sun was finally setting.
Psalm was home from her shift, apron still on, holding two iced coffees. “Well?”
Harbor, still dusty from the memory field, grinned. “We went to the Planet of Remembering. Mom cried happy. Nation cried a little. I didn’t cry at all.”
Nation elbowed him. “Liar. You sang the Jeffrey song twice.”
They all sat on the fort platform while Mom told Psalm everything, and Go-Diddy played the video Bitty had taken on his phone — shaky, full of bubbles and singing.
Later, in the kitchen, Nation was setting up G-Soccer and missed the plug, and under his breath: “Big Daddy.”
This time, Harbor just said, “Yeah. Me too, buddy. Let’s call him after.”
And upstairs, Bitty and Dassah put their leaf whistles on the windowsill next to the glowing amber stone from the chocolate planet and the smooth rock from Mt. Cheeks.
The whistle from today glowed just a little, pearly white.
If you listened close, you could almost hear a baby giggling.
The End... for now.