”Mommy? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” the little boy asks, his eyes wide as he looks up at his mother. She’s peeling the potatoes that she’s going to be using to make mashed potatoes later for dinner, but at the same time, there are tears streaming down her cheeks, and he doesn’t understand.
“Gabriel!” she exclaims, the surprise obvious in her voice as she hurriedly wipes her eyes, and then her hands on her apron. “What are you doing in here? I thought you were working on the puzzle you got for your birthday.”
“I just wanted a glass of milk,” he replies quietly, and the tone in his voice now shows that he thinks that he’s upset her, or made matters worse. She quickly catches on to that as a mother should, and kneels down, reaching her arms out so that she can wrap them around her son and hug him close to her, almost clinging to him. “Are you okay, Mommy?”
“Of course I am my sweet Gabriel. Mommy’s just tired is all,” she replies and forces a smile at him before standing up again. She then goes to the refrigerator and pours him a glass of chocolate milk as a special treat for him. “But Mommy’s okay, it’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“But…if you’re okay, then why are you crying? I thought you only cried when you were upset or hurt,” Gabriel counters, his face scrunching up just a bit as he tries to make sense of what it was that she was saying. “I don’t want you to be sad, Mommy.”
She lets out a soft approving sound at that and smiles, kneeling down in front of him again and pulling him close for another tight hug. “Don’t worry, as long as I have you, I will always be okay, I promise you that, Gabriel.”
She then lets go of him, standing up again and handing him the glass of chocolate milk.
“Go on now, go back to your room, and once I’ve finished the potatoes I’ll make you a snack, okay?” she asks with a small smile on her face.
He nods to that, and then turns to go back to his bedroom, and just a minute after her cheeks are stained with tears again.
~*~
“Daddy? Why you crying?” the little girl asks, and Gabriel turns to look down at his three year old daughter. She’s still in training pants and a bit chubby, just enough to make her adorable, and he gives her a small, forced smile.
“Molly, hi sweetie,” he says and quickly wipes his eyes before bending down to pick her up, placing her on the kitchen counter so that she’s more eyelevel with him, and he presses a soft kiss to her forehead. “Why aren’t you watching your movie? You did want to watch The Little Mermaid, right?”
“I want a cookie,” she replies at that, looking up at him with wide, hopeful eyes, and he can’t help but chuckle softly. The puppy eyes never fail at making his heart thump though, and he reaches to the cookie jar to get a sugar cookie for her. “But why crying?”
“Oh, it’s nothing sweetie, Daddy’s just a bit tired is all,” he says, smiling again when he watches her start to eat the cookie. A bit tired is a bit of an understatement. He’s exhausted, and he has been since she was born. He has to work so that he can support her, as well as having to deal with social services insisting to check up on them now and then to make sure that he’s capable of taking care of her on his own. He’s proved that he can thus far and their visits aren’t regular any more, but it’s still stressful to him, and some nights he loses sleep over it, as well as losing sleep over just generally worrying about his little girl.
“Tired?” she asks, her eyes widening a bit before she sets the cookie on the counter, and then smacks him, probably a bit harder than she realizes on the nose. “Night night.”
He can’t help but laugh loudly at that, though that only makes a small frown appear on her face.
“Night night!” she orders again, and then crosses her arms across her chest, her face scrunching up a bit because she does not find this situation to be as amusing as he does, clearly. “Tired! Night night!”
“Alright alright,” he says, still laughing as he scoops her up in his arms and carries her off back into the living room, making sure to grab the cookie as well, after all, she did ask for it. He sets her down in her play pen and then leans down to kiss her forehead. The movie is about half way over, so he knows that he can get a small nap in before she’ll want a new one.
“Night night, Molly-Dolly,” he says and smiles, going over to the couch and lying down, and in an instant he’s asleep, a nap he needed, emotion had always had a draining effect on him.
((Molly is
humanmapquest and is used with permission and love. Virginia Gray isn't bound to any muse))