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“Mommy, higher!” Blakely commands, and Otis is perched on the extra-large platform of the slide, watching his partners in crime.
“If I push you any higher, you’ll fall.”
And this is where Blakely shows her spirited soul. “I want higher. Higher, higher, higher.”
Garet has very little patience for drama and walks over to me on the covered porch and plops himself onto my lap.
“I know I have to like her, but why does she have to be such a drama queen?”
I begin to laugh at his words. “Daddy, you laughing at me?” Blakely calls from the swing, pumping her legs, trying to get more height.
“No, pumpkin. Never.” I wink at Sandra, and she knows the truth.
Garet leans up close to my ear to whisper. “No reason to get her more worked up, am I right?”
I stifle a laugh because he’s right, no reason to get Blakely Camille Torano worked up any further.
Sandra leans in and whispers something to our daughter, and she jumps out of the swing. “You better believe it, sister!”
Blakely’s animated response has us laughing as she runs up to Garet. “If we hurry up into our jammies, Mommy says we can have ice cream and watchAladdin.”
Garet knows a good deal when he hears it and is out of my lap in an instant. Otis follows the kids, able to keep up with them, the compact pug he still is.
Sandra crosses the large back porch and sits on my lap. “You know how to hurry up bedtime, don’t you, Rosso?” I ask.
“It’s really a talent of mine.”
I can hear the twins laughing together from their rooms. This little life we’ve made for ourselves—the home, Blakely, Garet, sharing it with our family. Everything I have is because of this beauty in my lap.
“You know what they say, right? The earlier we get kids in bed, the earlier we get to go to bed.”
“I love the way you think, Dominic Torano.”
“And I love everything about you, Sandra Torano.”
She rests her head against mine. “I love our life.”
“I do too.” But as soon as I get these words out, an argument breaks out between Garet and Blakely.
“Even in chaos, I love everything we built,” she says, standing and readying herself to break up a fight.
I follow her toward the raised voices of our kids, knowing she’s right. I’d take the chaos over everything else, because it’s our chaos. The chaos of love that we’ve built together. Sandra’s my lighthouse, my source of brightness, my beacon, bringing me back to her every time we’re apart, because we’ll always be better together.
