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And tentative reconciliation.
I wouldn’t act like everything was better that day.
But some talking, good food, and togetherness went a long way to rebuilding those burnt bridges.
Detroit - 11 years
“She’s broken,” Everleigh declared, eyes wide and as the baby settled down as soon as I turned on her playlist.
Of soothing… old-school gangsta rap.
“She’s… got varied taste,” I said, smiling as the song just kept cutting out at all the curse words. Finding ‘clean’ old-school gangsta rap had been… difficult. But we couldn’t have the other kids singing about guns and drugs just because it soothed our youngest.
“How come all the boys were soothed by the songs of theEvermoreandFolklorealbums, but my only girl thinks songs about street gang fights are lullabies?”
“It’s probably the beat,” I said, shrugging. “Maybe it reminds her of your heartbeat when she was in the womb?”
“Maybe,” she agreed, standing up from the glider, to go put the baby down in her crib.
We’d learned the hard way after the first baby how important it was to put them down when they were sleeping. I don’t think we slept at all for the first six months because our son had gotten so accustomed to being held that he screamed his head off if we put him down.
Everleigh tiptoed out of the room, and my phone was held captive there, playing our little girl her ‘lullabies’ as we moved into the hallway.
“You okay?” I asked, putting a hand to her lower back, and pulling her against my chest.
“Tired,” she admitted, exhaling hard.
“You know what we could do?” I asked, rubbing at the knots in her back.
“Get some coffee?” she asked.
“Call up Dallas to come scoop up the boys,” I suggested. “And hand off the baby to your mom,” I added, “so we can get some sleep.”
Her mom had been amazing.
With each grand baby, she took her vacation for the year to come and stay with us for the first several weeks, so we had some extra help. When she left, Bayleigh would usually come to visit, her two kids keeping our older ones occupied, so she could help with the baby.
It was fucking amazing to have the kind of support system we did. And that wasn’t even counting the club guys and their women.
“That sounds so… decadent,” Everleigh decided, already sounding half asleep just leaning against me.
“You go get started. I’ll rally the troops,” I said.
“Make sure Dallas takes the inhaler,” she said, walking numbly toward our bedroom.
“Of course,” I agreed.
Our oldest had developed asthma when he was just three after a bad allergy season, the wheezing terrifying the shit out of us, leaving us rushing him in the middle of the night to Dr. Price’s doorstep.
We’d been so traumatized that we kept inhalers all over the place, just in case.
I called up Dallas, packed up some basic shit for the three boys, ages eight, five, and three, and handed them off to their uncle who was going to delight the shit out of them by letting them play in a police cruiser.
We kept going to get the girl that Everleigh had her heart set on doing girly shit within a few years. But those boys of ours? Total mama’s boys. I had a feeling that our daughter was going to be a daddy’s girl.
“She’s listening to hip-hop on my phone,” I told Everleigh’s mom as I handed her the monitor as she stood in the kitchen, baking cookies for the kids.
“I got this,” she assured me. “You two get some good sleep.”
