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The wall shows five rows.
Katie, Ryan, Alexis, Sebastian, and Tessa, each of them in a different color, but all of them sparking the same contentment in my heart.
I can hear my family elsewhere in the house, my wife with her voice raised, singing as she grills dinner in the garden. Her voice lilts to me through the open window.
She’s one of the most successful artists in the country – I always knew she would be – so it’s probably not a great idea to suggest that she change careers to singing. But the way my angel sounds, she could.
Katie is in her room, the one adjacent to the studio, clapping her hands and doing funny voices for Alexis. Alexis has always looked up to her bigger sister, trailing her anywhere she went from the day she could walk. And Katie delights in making her little sister laugh.
She’s going to be an actress. I just know it. She loves inventing different characters.
I hear Tessa and Sebastian, the twins, breathing contentedly on the baby monitor from my pocket. I keep it on me at all times.
When they’re older, they’ll get separate rooms, but for now, I love to listen to their sleepy breathing joining in a song of love, affection, and contentment.
I love my life. I love my family. I love how perfectly everything has gone.
I’m the luckiest bastard alive.
And I’ll never take it for granted.
“Daddy,” Ryan says. “You’re going all dreamy-eyed. Dreamy-eyed Daddy-eyed.”
I chuckle. “Sorry, little man. Look.”
I reach forward, bringing my hand closer and closer to his first handprint.
Just when I’m about to touch it, I change course and direct my tickling hand at his belly instead.
Ryan lets out a giggle of delight and rolls away from me.
I can’t believe there was a time when I thought I could live without my son’s laughter.
It seems like a different life. It is a different life.
“No, Daddy, no,” he laughs, leaping to his feet with his arms at his sides. “I’ll get you.”
“Oh, will you?” I chuckle, climbing to my knees and mirroring his pose.
He has his mother’s spark in his eyes, her defiance.
He has my smile, everybody says so. And that just makes me smile all the more.
He runs at me and I catch him, lifting him over my head.
“Argh, argh,” he yells, doing his pirate voice, pretending he has a cutlass as she lashes his hand at me.
“Oweeeeeeeee,” I yell, falling down and closing my eyes.
“Daddy, Daddy,” he breathes frantically. He brings his hand to my chest and gives me a playful thump. “I’ll save you, Daddy.”
I lurch up and let out a gasp.
“Thanks, son,” I laugh. “That was a close one.”
“Say it prop’lee, Daddy.”
I grin. Prop’lee.
I hope he says it like that for a few years to come yet.
I put on my funny voice, making it deep and ogre-ish.
“That was a close one.”
He collapses into another fit of giggles, and I stare down at him in wonder, my wife’s singing whirling around us and my twins’ breathing purring beneath it all.
Katie makes another joke and Alexis joins her giggling with Ryan’s.
“Kids,” Sophia calls. “It’s burger time.”
“Hear that?” I grin, ruffling Ryan’s hair. “Life really can’t get any better, can it?”
“Nope, Daddy,” he smiles. “It’s the bestest life in the whole wide world.”
