showing up

Today I really needed him. Lucas, that is.

It was one of those nights where I was alone with the kids and nothing was right in the world.  They all wanted me, they all needed me, I had nothing left to give.  Dinner needed to be cleaned up. Toys needed to be picked up. Subtraction problems were supposed to be worked on.  Brady didn’t want to eat anything for dinner and was crying.  Bryleigh was balancing precariously on top of the table trying to rehang valentine decorations.  This was all before the whole teethbrush/pj’s/prayers drama.  It wasn’t even bath night.  I didn’t even cook for Pete’s sake.

It was one of those nights Lucas would have stepped up, because that’s what he did. First he would have tried to hug me and I will embarrassingly admit I would resist at times, I was too pissed off at my chaotic world.  I would jokingly pummel him and our standing joke was he would stand right in front of me, his really tallness over my tallness and tell me I was short.  I would then touch his chin and tell him his chin hairs were getting too long.  They were blonde. White blonde.

He would remove Bry kicking and screaming from the table and try to find something Brady would eat.  He would promise to do the dishes after his homework.  Most of all he was just there.  There to understand. To help as much as he could without failing his biology test.

Sometimes its just about being there.

Its about showing up.