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LEVI
“Good morning, and I’m so sorry! We didn’t mean to oversleep,” I said, entering the kitchen where my father sat at the island, a bowl of oatmeal, with a side of fruit and glass of orange juice in front of him.
Ulric, in his infant carrier on the counter next to him, was dressed in a new outfit and sleeping soundly. Walking over to him first, I put my hand on his head.
“Don’t worry about it. Thea has everything so nicely organized, and he was a sweetheart,” my mother said, placing a plate of French toast dusted with powdered sugar, and a side of bacon and egg whites.
“Mom, you didn’t have to do this.” She used to make this for us on special occasions.
“I wanted to. It felt…” she paused looking at all of us, “nostalgic.”
“I’m so sorry!” Thea ran into the kitchen, and my mom put out a plate for her too.
“Sweetheart, it’s all right. Everyone is fine. Ulric has been fed, bathed, changed, and is sleeping now.”
Thea looked to our son beside me, and then back to my mother, wrapping her arms around her.
“Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
“We’ve set a date,” I announced before she could say thank you or sorry again.
“Really?” My mother smiled.
And so did I, looking to Thea for her to say it again.
She nodded her head. “March 31st.”
“That’s so soon!”
“No, it is not,” I said quickly, before she made Thea doubt the choice.
“They have a child, live and work together. They are long overdue,” my father said with a nod, and I wanted to thank him.
“There is so much to do…” My mother was already reaching for her phone, most likely to call everyone in the state. But then she froze and slowly turned back to Thea. “That is, unless you had other things in mind.”
“Anything you want, I want,” Thea told her.
“Translation: fork over your wallet,” my father whispered to me as I gently rocked Ulric’s seat.
“Just when it was recovering from this house,” I muttered back.
“It’s a good house,” my father said, looking around the kitchen.
“Kinda far from work though.”
“Not really.” The problem with people who lived in cities was the moment anything was more than a few minutes away, it was considered far.
“When do you go back?” he asked.
“It was only supposed to be a month, but after yesterday I’m glad I took off more. I had no idea how in the world Thea would have dealt his coughing and crying alone.” Just the thought of it was stressful.
“She would have called an in house doctor and after the fourth time, you’d be fighting over why he needs his own personal doctor all the time.” My father snickered though he didn’t seem to find any of it funny. He looked to my mother again before taking another spoonful of oatmeal. I didn’t need to press it more. I could piece it together. It was no secret my father was a workaholic. Some of my earliest memories were of him in his study pacing back forth on the phone, yanking the cord when it got tangled.
I’m glad some of his generations’ habits, the whole men must work, were less pushed.
“When does she go back to work? I’m sure she’ll want as much time—”
“She wants go back in April.”
