Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
August crashed down next to me, but curled over me, reaching for something.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting your phone,” he said. “To tell that realtor to make an over-list price offer right now.”
Have I mentioned how much I loved this man?
‘Cause I did.
More than I ever thought I was even capable of.
Did he still bitch about my reusable silicone bags that took the place of his little single-use zipper bags? Yep. Did I still nag him about the ingredients in his after shave? Absolutely. Did we still bicker and disagree? All the time. But, somehow, it was our differences that made for such a deep bond between us.
He cared about the things I cared about not because he necessarily did, but because he knew I did.
I learned how to do things that had never been in my wheelhouse before. Like compromise. Like not always get my way.
And, amazingly enough, I actually liked that.
It meant that we were building something together, that I wasn’t going to have to always be and do everything alone for the rest of my life.
“I think that big Weeping Willow has to be taken down in the backyard, though,” August said after contacting the realtor.
“Over my dead body,” I said, making August’s lips twitch.
“Want to argue about it for a while?” he asked, and I knew exactly what was on his mind.
“Yes, but I want some of that leftover pasta first,” I said, rolling over his body.
And as I walked to the kitchen, I caught sight of myself in a mirror, stopping dead in my tracks.
Because there it was.
A giant smile on my lips, my joy seeping out of my very pores. That same look that my dad had on his desk of me when I first opened my shop.
Bone-deep happy.
That was what I was.
And something told me that it was only going to get better.
August - 12 years
“What is going on here?” I asked as I walked into the dining room to find Traveler and the kids deep into another craft project.
When it came to time with the kids, Traveler was big on crafts, walks in the woods, and puzzles. Not a day passed that didn’t involve glue of some kind. Often involving glue, leaves and acorns found on a walk, and some DIY thing they were making with all of it.
And every single time, Traveler was right there with them, making something herself.
Though she might not even realize it herself, I thought that doing these things with the kids was a way of her sort of healing her inner child, the one who didn’t get to do all this kind of shit because she was in the middle of an unhappy marriage, then bitter divorce.
I never had any doubts about what kind of mom she would be. All you had to do was take one look at her charitable work to know how huge her capacity for love and nurturing was.
Ever since our first son came out, she’d been all in on the mothering thing.
She’d even stepped down from the non-profit she’d been working on for a few years. Sure, she did still volunteer her time for charities that were near and dear to her, and even brought the kids with her to teach them about giving back to your community, but she’d chosen to make being a mom her full-time job.
“Toilet paper roll craft day,” Traveler explained, waving at the table.
And, sure enough, everything the kids had made, from the colorful Japanese Flying Carps hanging from a stick to the shark binoculars, the bird feeders, and the race cars were made from old TP rolls.
“Haven’t you wondered where all our old toilet paper rolls have gone to?” she asked.
“Not once,” I said, getting a smile out of her as I squatted down next to one of the kids’ chairs.
“Daddy, we made beans!” our second-oldest at six, declared, pointing to the sideboard where a bunch of empty rolls were sitting in a box and filled with dirt.
“We are doing green bean starts in them,” Traveler explained. “They work way better than the plastic trays anyway.”
“Fish,” our three-year-old said, shoving his trio of carp in my face so fast he almost took out an eye.
“You know what I think?” I asked as Traveler rocked our very fussy newborn.
The first three had been relatively easy babies.
“If the first had been this fussy, I don’t think we’d have had this many,” Traveler declared, her head on my shoulder as I had the baby propped up against my legs in bed, rocking him side to side to try to lull him.
We probably would have.
She loved the baby stage, the toddler stage, the little kid stage. She would probably be crazy enough to enjoy the teenager stage when we got there. In only four years with our oldest.
God, time felt like it was flying.