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I WANT MY FAMILY
PRESENT
Saturday nights in the Patterson/Milas home used to mean date night with the girls. They’d spend all week trying to decide what activity we’d do and the four of us would go to a movie or the aquarium or whatever they ended up deciding.
Saturday nights are now ping-ponged between Peter and I and it’s Peter’s turn.
So, I sit home alone, with a bottle of wine, trying to hash out some design plans for clients.
Certainly not the life I’d pictured at our intimate wedding ceremony. Not the life myyiayiahad pictured as she wiped her tears when I said, “I do.”
Because Idon’tanymore.
I hear the front door unlock and I smile when Jilly comes bounding inside, her mouth blue.
“Someone had a slushy,” I sing out just as she jumps into my arms.
“I finished the whole thing,” she answers, triumphantly, a large grin showcasing the space where one of her front teeth still hadn’t grown in. I take one of her golden braids in each hand before pressing my palms to her cheeks.
She is all the things I love; she’s all the things I never thought I’d lose.
“Go ahead and get in the bath. I’ll be up there in a few.” I press a kiss to her nose, and she skips away, already to the stairs by the time her older sister makes it inside.
“How was the movie?” Penelope shrugs and I’m surprised when she pulls up the stool next to me and sits on it. “Everything okay?”
Peter stands just outside the kitchen, his arms crossed as he leans against the doorway. But I’m not focused on him as I stare down at my ever-emotional Penny.
I wasn’t thinking clearly when I named her after my mother. All I saw was her dark hair and I felt this momentary strength that we could break cycles, the two of us.
“Can we all go together next Saturday?” she asks, and I glance up at Peter, unsure of what transpired tonight.
“Uh…” He shrugs, his eyes wide with that innocence that makes me wonder how he ended up with someone like me. “Yeah, sure.”
“I think you would’ve thought the movie was stupid too,” she reasons as she hops off the stool and I smile after her.
“Probably,” I offer her, remembering a time when we were a team and shared opinions. I used to think Penny was more like me and Jillian was more like Peter. And maybe that’s still true but the way Penelope has latched onto her father lately makes me wonder if similarities mean nothing when it comes to love.
Her long dark hair is in a ponytail, and she grabs her tablet from the counter before she begins to head upstairs toward her room.
“Twenty minutes and then I’ll be up there to get you ready for bed,” I call out after her.
“’Kay,” she says in her sweet little voice.
I glance back at Peter and before I can ask, he sighs and sits on the stool Penny vacated. His long legs jut out and I glance down at his sock-clad feet. He hates wearing shoes in the house. It was something I used to think was cute about him.
“She’s convinced I’m always on Jilly’s side,” he explains. “But it’s hard to explain to her that although she doesn’t enjoy something that her sister does, she doesn’t need to mock it. And you know Jilly thinks the world of her older sister, so she starts crying and then it becomes this whole thing.”
He rubs his hands over his face, and I begin to see just how tired he truly is. How deep the lines of time have etched in his face, how the glimmers of grey have weaved into his blond hair. Peter’s thirty-six to my thirty-one was never something I paid attention to. Until I realized this was the age Abraham was when I met him.
Thinking of a twenty-one-year-old me dealing with Peter as he is now confuses me. I can’t see this man dipping into that young a dating pool.
And it warps a past I once only saw through my own biased eyes.
“Parenting is tough,” I try to offer, “But they love you so much. And we’re doing the best we can.”
“Are we?” he asks, his bright eyes piercing mine as he sets his hands down on the counter. “Are we enough when we aren’t a unit anymore?”
My own fears stare back at me through his eyes.
