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“Only if I can feed you back.” Is that weird? Romantic? Kinky? Erotic? Whatever. I don’t care. It’s just us being us and enjoying us, which is all I could ever want.
EPILOGUE
LEON
“More Lord Poo Ultra-Cool Doodoo, Dada! More!”
“No, I want to hear about the time Auntie Kitty caught Dad’s hair on fire.”
Two-year-old Galen and four-year-old Tarl rarely agree on anything. They love each other because they’re brothers, but they’re as different as two boys could ever be. I’m more than prepared for the bedtime round of bickering, and so is Darby. She smiles at both our boys, her face soft with love. I lean in across the bed and press a kiss on her forehead. Neither boy says anything because they are more than used to our affection for each other. There is no gagging about the kissing and no laughter. To them, this is what a family looks like—parents who love each other and both of them more than anything in the world.
“You were there when Auntie Kitty caught Dad’s hair on fire,” Darby says patiently. “It was just last month at your birthday party.”
“But I want to hear you tell it,” Tarl insists. He sticks out his lip in a pout. “Please, Mom?”
Darby’s as soft as I am. “Alright, I’ll tell that story. Then we read Lord Poo Turd Ultra-Cool Dude Doodoo again.”
“Yay! But I want it nowwww,” Galen insists.
I stroke my hand over his dark downy head of curls. “Hang tight, bud. Part of life is about sharing and compromise. Your brother gets a story, and then you get your story. Because we have to tell you two stories, it actually means you get to spend longer in our bed before we put you to bed in your room for the night. Extra time before bedtime.”
“Ahhhhhh,” Galen says, so serious as a two-year-old that it makes me burst out laughing. He’s adorable and so easygoing—the most beautiful baby right from the time he was born. Darby was only in labor for two hours the second time. Galen came in a rush, and the birth was easy. I’m saying that as someone who didn’t have to endure the pain or heal from it after, so maybe she’d disagree with me on that.
Tarl, however, was the exact opposite. Darby was in labor for thirty-three hours with him, and even though he slept through the night from the start, in his waking hours, he was always raring to go. He was seldom satisfied with anything we did. He wanted to see the world and was frustrated by his lack of mobility, even when he was a freaking newborn.
“Fire hair!” Tarl chants. “Please, Mom!”
Darby grins at me. “Okay, I’ll tell the fire story, then Dad can read the book. How about that?”
“Yeah,” Tarl says with a nod. He settles back against our pillows, elbowing his brother over just a little even though there’s lots of room. Galen knows how to pick his battles, so he says nothing and smiles sweetly at his brother, which makes Tarl roll his eyes. Tarl thinks Galen is too much of a baby. Admittedly, Tarl is four going on forty, and Galen is two going on, well, two and a half.
“Stowy about Daddy’s hand?” Galen asks, so sweet and innocently.
Darby sighs. “It’s not really a toy.”
The kids think otherwise. They love the prosthetic hand. I no longer wear it and haven’t worn it since I got those tests done, started the medication that changed my life, and sucked up my pride to admit I was wrong to Darby. While we don’t exactly let the boys play with the hand, we do keep it on the dresser in our room, and they think it’s the most fascinating thing in the world.
“How about tomorrow night?” I say. “We’ll have an extra-long, extra-special, extra-awesome storytime tonight to help you wait for one about the hand. Also, we have to think of one. Stories don’t just come off the top of our heads. I mean, not all the time. Mommy’s really good at that, but Daddy? Not so much. Daddy needs time to think.”
“Otay,” Galen giggles. “Otay, daddy. Hand tomowwow.”
It’s so easy, really, to please young kids. I hope they think I’m this awesome later in life. I don’t have my fingers crossed because inevitably, I think all kids get to an age where they realize their parents aren’t as cool as they once thought, but I’m hoping.
Galen seems like he’ll always be easy to please. Tarl is harder, but not really. He likes trains and cars and pretty much anything with an engine. I discovered a passion for building model cars and trucks a few years ago, and he shares that passion. His hands are unbelievably steady for a four-year-old, and he’s far more adept than I am at putting anything together. I’m not sure who chooses models with limited mobility on their one hand, but hey. I like it, and I’m in no rush when I do them. Tarl has an engineering mind. He loves mechanics, adores electronics, and solves puzzles like a pro. He’s so smart that Darby was worried he’d be out thinking us within a few years, but if that happens, then we’ll make sure we do everything we can to ensure he gets the education that’s on pace with him.
Galen is sweet. He loves animals, and he’s not in a particular rush to do anything. Sometimes he stops in the middle of playtime just to tell Darby or me that he loves us. For a guy who used to think shedding tears was a weakness, I have done plenty of that with my children. I don’t consider it at all unmanly to cry at the birth of your kids or get teary-eyed when they astound you, amaze you, or look at you with pure love and adoration.
Darby starts telling the story of Tarl’s birthday party. “Auntie Kitty insisted she would barbeque the burgers and hot dogs because we had a full house with all the kids, and we needed eyes on the inside. There were kids climbing the cabinets, the counters, and the walls….”
Both boys giggle.
“The only problem was—”
“Auntie Kitty didn’t know how to barbeque,” Tarl fills in for Darby.
“That’s right!” She tickles him along his ribs, making him squirm and squeal. “She did things with the propane that made it go full-on, and then she couldn’t figure out how to get the barbeque to turn on. She had to call Dad out there. He didn’t realize the propane was already on, and when he lit the match, the barbeque turned into a ball of flame that didn’t just catch his hair on fire.”
“It burned off his eyebrows!” Tarl screams. He laughs wildly after.
