suburban mom™

           ❈   at six, i pour a shot of mommy water™.   ❈

                                         carrd   •    development     •    memes  

a study in: motherhood as both anchor and redemption, the quiet courage of a woman who could have been anything, learning to be everything for everyone else, a girl who once ruled hallways with a wink and a dare, dreams traded for safety with a ring that fit too neatly, & the soft ache of a life half‑lived.

A selective, mutuals only blog for KAREN WHEELER from Stranger Things. Adored by Vixen (+25). Mostly canon based with some deviances and plenty of headcanons.

wire: wheelerwinemom

est. oct 2016 and resurrected 2022, again in 2025

"Okay," Karen starts, talking over her daughter to get her to take a breath, but the girl keeps going and rambling and there doesn't seem to be anything that her mother can do. "Okay, Nance - Nancy, calm down," she keeps trying, until the room falls quiet for a moment and Karen takes a deep breath, modelling for her daughter. "Slow down, okay? Take a deep breath."

She has no idea what's going on, all she knows that she was on the phone with a friend when Nancy burst through the front door in search for her mother. Now, the phone is back on the horn and the woman's glass of wine is left unattended, but her complete focus is on her daughter and trying to make sense of what she was saying. "Honey, I believe you. Okay? Whatever it is, I do, I just .." Beat. "I don't understand what you're saying.

Karen glances up from the bowl with cake batter for just a second, before she quickly pretends to have to reread the recipe so that she can buy herself a little bit more time. They cut deep, Max's words, because she recognizes her own kids in the girl and she recognizes herself in Max's mother, but after a loaded silence she finally looks over to the girl who, at this point, is family, and smiles sadly.

"Love is a very .. complicated emotion, Max," she starts, wiping her hands on the towel that's tucked into her apron and swallowing deeply before she continues. "You're a little young to understand, but .. It comes in many forms, and maybe it doesn't always look the way it does in movies, or on TV, but that doesn't mean it's not there."

She doesn't know what's going on (or what has gone on) between Max's parents, but it doesn't really matter. The most important thing is what she says next. "But whatever it was that your parents felt - or didn't feel for each other, the only thing that matters is that they love you." With that, she smiles reassuringly, because in her mind, there's no way that's not true.

                                                K A R E N    W H E E L E R selective , oc & crossover friendly

They're standing next to each other (and he's towering over her, as he has for a few years now), but Karen smiles regardless as she looks at the cozy fire and the well-decorated tree next to it. "It is delightful, isn't it?" she smiles, wrapping one arm around his slender one and squeezing it tight. "It looks beautiful, honey, thank you," she says, untangling herself to go fix an ornament that hung a little crooked before she turns around and looks back.

"You told your friends 5 o'clock, right?" Long gone were the days where it was just the five of them - and Ted's parents, who came over for Christmas. In recent years, the holiday had morphed into a large gathering with all of the kids' friends, and even though Karen complained every year about the amount of cooking and cleaning she had to do, she secretly loved the happy buzzing of warm chatter and love echoeing throughout the house on Christmas eve. "I hope we have enough logs," she then muses out loud, before she turns back to her only son. "Check with your father, will you?"

She's standing with her back to the cart while scanning the aisle for the right brand of cereal, her shopping list in one hand and a pen in the other. "I swear, every other month they change the layout of this store," she laments to her teenager, who's already added three other things into the cart, behind his mother's back.

"What's that one Holly loves again? Crunch berries or Vanilla crunch? God, I can never remember ..." she's talking more to herself than to her son at this point, but finally grabs a box of both and turns around, just in time to see Mike pull his hand back from the cart, sneakily. "Michael! I said no more chocolate," she scolds, though lovingly, as she puts the cereal in the cart and then picks up what he just threw in. "We have a whole candy drawer at home."