It was Mother’s Day. Granted he’d been doing double duty for the past two years, being both mother and father to his two sons, but he hadn’t expected any sort of acknowledgment from the boys on Mother’s Day. On Father’s Day, yes, but definitely not on this holiday.
The mug had been wrapped in what seemed like an entire roll of wrapping paper. Gary had proclaimed proudly that he had done most of the wrapping.
“But I put the tape on,” Greg was quick to tell him.
Micah praised their teamwork.
The mug had World’s Greatest Mom written on it in pink-and-yellow ceramic flowers. Looking at it now, Micah could only grin and shake his head. Well, at least their hearts were in the right place.
“Um, I think you guys are a little confused about the concept,” he confided.
Gary’s face scrunched up in apparent confusion. “What’s a con-cept?”
“It’s an idea, a way of—”
Micah abruptly stopped himself. As a reliability engineer who worked in the top secret missile defense systems department of Donovan Defense, a large national company, he had a tendency to get rather involved in his explanations. Given his sons’ tender ages, he decided that a brief and simple explanation was the best way to go.
So he tried again. “It’s a way of understanding something. The point is, I’m very touched, guys, but you do understand that I’m not your mom, right? I’m your dad.” He looked from Gary to Greg to see if they had any lingering questions or doubts.
“We know that,” Gary told him as if he thought it was silly to ever confuse the two roles. “But sometimes you do mom things,” he reminded his father.
“Yeah, like make cookies when I’m sick,” Greg piped up.
Which was more often than he was happy about, Micah couldn’t help thinking. Greg, smaller for his age than even Gary, was his little survivor. Born prematurely, his younger son had had a number of complicating conditions that had him in and out of hospitals until he was almost two years old.
Because of all the different medications he’d been forced to take, the little boy’s immune system was somewhat compromised. As an unfortunate by-product of that, Greg was more prone to getting sick than his brother.
And eve
ry time he did get sick, Micah watched him carefully, afraid the boy would come down with another bout of pneumonia. The last time, a year and a half ago, Greg had almost died. The thought haunted him for months.
Clearing his throat, Micah squared his shoulders. His late mother, Diane, had taught him to accept all gifts gracefully.
“Well, then, thank you very much,” he told his sons with a wide smile that was instantly mirrored by each of the boys.
“Aunt Sheila helped us,” Gary told him, knowing that he couldn’t accept all of the credit for the gift.
“Yeah, she drove us to the store,” Greg chimed in. “But me and Gary picked it out. And we used our own money, too,” he added as a postscript.
“‘Gary and I,’” Micah automatically corrected Greg.
The little boy shook his head so hard, his straight blond hair appeared airborne for a moment, flying to and fro about his head.
“No, not you, Daddy, me,” Greg insisted. “Me and Gary.”
There was time enough to correct his grammar when he was a little older, Micah thought fondly.
Out loud he marveled, “Imagine that,” for his sons’ benefit. A touch of melancholy drifted over him. “You two are growing up way too fast,” he told them. “Before you know it, you’re going to be getting married and starting families of your own.”
“Married?” Greg echoed, frowning as deeply as if his father had just told him that he was having liver for dinner for the next year.
“To a girl?” Gary asked incredulously, very obviously horrified by the mere suggestion that he be forced to marry a female. Everyone knew girls were icky—except for Aunt Sheila, of course, but she didn’t count.
“That’s more or less what I had in mind, yes,” Micah told his sons, doing his very best not to laugh at their facial expressions.
Covering his face, Gary declared, “Yuck!” with a great deal of feeling.
“Yeah,” Greg cried, mimicking his brother, “double yuck!”