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Charlotte
It’s a small group, but every person in this room is meaningful.
Ethan is wiped out, the evidence of the second piece of cake his grandmother allowed smeared across his tie.
This morning he insisted on wearing a tie and a belt, just like his father. Lawrence got a kick out of that, being as how Ethan used to insist on wearing a fur lined trapper hat in the summertime before Simon was in the picture.
“He was born in the Upper Peninsula, so he’ll always be a Yooper.”
“Will I ever be one?” Barbara teases.
“Nope, you’re a fair weathered girl, through and through. You won’t even come along when I take the boys ice fishing.”
She heads up to see her “friend” Lawrence at least once a month, sometimes with her sons, sometimes without. They don’t feel the need to put a label on it, but I hope one day they’ll make it official.
“Grammy,” Ethan whines, and I look over to see Simon’s mother smile from ear to ear, just as she does every time he calls her name—or breathes air for that matter. “Can I have more cake?”
She looks to me and I shrug my shoulders. She only gets to spend time with her grandson in person a few times a year, so there’s no way I’ll ask her to play the role of disciplinarian.
“Maybe we’ll share a piece. How does that sound?”
Next week he’ll be back to his routine of healthy foods and adequate rest, but for now I can let it slide. It’s not every day he has his entire family in one place.
I see the way Michael and Brandon look over at him every few minutes before looking back to one another smiling. They can hardly wait. Brandon’s high school girlfriend, of all people, agreed to surrogate for them, and she’s due to give birth to their twins in late August. That will be Simon and Ethan’s first time on an airplane. Ethan is excited, but I think Simon is nervous.
Ethan has grandparents, he has uncles, he has Barbara and Arlene as de-facto aunts, and soon he’ll have cousins.
He has a mother and a father who love him, and parents who love one another. And as of today, we all share the same name.
It was important to Simon, and now it’s official. Ethan is legally Ethan Mason Wade and I am Charlotte Mason Wade. My husband, the father of my child, is Simon Mason Wade.
He took my name too. It was his idea.
It’s hard to shock me, but he did this morning when he said, “It’s how it should be. I want the names Mason and Wade to be together, for all of us.”
“You’d take a name that caused you so much pain?”
He moved in close, wrapped his arms around me from behind as I was putting in my earrings.
“I want your name because I love you.” Meeting my eyes in the mirror, he added, “And love will always be stronger than hate.”
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