Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“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.
I let out a harrumph and a sigh. “It was not funny when it happened. Auntie Kitty had to swat my hair with her jean jacket, and growing back eyebrows is hard.”
Both boys laugh at me. My eyebrows are still rather sparse. Darby had to fill them in for me with her makeup, and my god, if I have ever been worried about being less than masculine, it was wearing makeup to work. So far, no one seems to have noticed.
“But Mommy is a lawyer, and she’ll sue their booties!” Tarl yells.
“Who?” Darby asks in surprise. “Who are we going to sue? The answer would be no one, by the way.”
“The people who made the barbeque so unsafe.”
Darby and I share a look. Sometimes, Tarl’s mind amazes me. Darby launches into a speech on why we are to take care and be careful with things, not sue the people who invented them, and that sometimes accidents happen. She also informs both boys that she’s not that kind of lawyer, on principle or in that arena of law. Darby works in family law at the very same firm where she got a job years ago working at reception. She worked there while she went to school, then she was hired on after graduating. She doesn’t do the kind of family law that she sees as bad family law—the unfortunate side of things where it gets really messy. She tries to put good into the world and help people, often sharing her time and expertise with social workers and helping to protect vulnerable women and children.