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It’safter midnight when we pull into the driveway and I turn off the truck. Glancing over I find Maddison fast asleep.
I watch her for a few minutes, all the lights on our house reflecting off the windows surrounding her. Mads stretches, sighs and her lips purse, but she remains sleeping. I know I could wake her, but instead I quietly open the door and move around the front of the truck.
Doing my best not to wake her I open her door and then reach in, lifting her up and holding her close to my chest. The smell of her shampoo and the vanilla body spray she wears engulfs me.
Maddison snuggles in closer, burying her nose in my shirt, I continue up the porch steps holding her securely.
She doesn’t wake until we are inside and I am lowering her to the mattress, starting to remove her shoes.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” She whispers in the darkness and I lift my gaze to meet hers. “It was a lot of fun tonight.”
“It was,” I agree as she holds my stare. The way her eyes droop and the purse of her lipsreminds me of the lost look she gets when we make love. Maddison is incredible in every sense of the word.
I still think about how close I came to losing her, and it kills me. I’ve seen things, I’ve done things, and those things haunt me. I still have dreams of the times I was overseas and the life I lived for those years. I have flashbacks,things I know I will regret for the rest of my life, but none of that compares to the ache I felt that day at the hospital.
It hurt to breathe.
My entire world was falling apart because she was lying in that hospital and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help her. I couldn’t take away the pain, I couldn’t heal her.
I can honestly say that I’ve loved Maddison from the very moment I met her.
Suddenly she lifts herself up and I watch as she grabs the hem of her sweater and slowly lifts it up and tosses it to the floor. “I don’t want to sleep,” she confesses, moving her hands to the waistband of her jeans. Slowly she unsnaps the button and begins to wiggle them over her hips and down her thighs. Reaching my breaking point, grabbing them I finish pulling them off.
Maddison laughs when I hurry to take off my own, practically tripping over them in the process.
Crawling up the bed, I lower my body over hers and cup her face. “Baby, I love you,” I whisper, offering her a soft kiss. “You’ve given me everything I could ever ask for.”
“Not everything,” she replies and for a minute I only stare at her.” I didn’t want to take away from Terrance and Grace’s joy.”
I feel like I can’t breathe.
“I wanted to tell you this morning, but Sarah was cranky. Then the afternoon got away from us and then tonight, well,” she shrugs. “I took a test a week ago and then I wanted to be sure so I went and had a blood test to confirm.”
I still have yet to say a word. My heart is racing but not because I’m scared.
“Maybe it’ll be a boy.”
“I don’t care either way,” I finally say. “I love being surrounded by my girls, so if we have ten of them, I’m okay with that.”
I kiss her again, feeling like I'm floating. “You’re my best friend,” I tell her, “You are my everything, and you’ve given me more than I could have ever dreamed. And this...” I slide my hand over her stomach. Pausing, closing my eyes and taking in a deep breath. “It’s the best Christmas present you could have given to me.”
We end our night getting lost in one another, celebratingthe news of our growing family and me falling even more in love with my wife in the process.
landon and chloe
seven
Landon
This Christmas is a bittersweet one.It’s my daughter Allayah’s first Christmas but it’s also the first one we will celebrate without my father. We lost him to cancer just shy of six months ago and I can honestly say without Chloe and Laya, I don’t know how I would have made it through.
My mother is slowly learning to live in a world without my dad in it. It’s tough, and she still has some pretty bad days. But my Aunt Joan is now living with her and together I think they help one another. Both have lost their husbands much too soon, but find the strength to continue on in the support of one another.
It was hard to see the strong man I’ve always known dwindle away to nothing. My entire life he was the strong, a proud man, the protector of our family and then he got sick. He went from a two hundred plus pound man to barely one hundred. He was frail and it broke something inside of me to see him that way, but never once did he complain. Until his dying day he talked of how much he loved us all and how proud he was of the man I’d become.
He met and fell in love with the woman I married, he accepted her as his daughter and then he met our daughter, just barely but he held her and kissed her forehead. He whispered how he’d always protect her even if she couldn’t see him and there was not a dry eye in the room.
