I absorb her words. They hold so much truth. I understand that nothing means anything if you’re miserable.
The waiter appears at our table with my water and Loraine’s wine and takes our order before disappearing again.
Loraine taps her red painted nails against her wine glass. “It’s funny,” she begins, staring down into her glass like it holds all the answers in the world, “how one minute you’re young with little children and then you blink and they’re grown. I always thought people were dumb for saying that—I mean, you have a child and they’re with you for the first eighteen or so years of their life, but they’re right. They’re gone in an instant.”
“Loraine—” I reach for her hand.
She shakes her head and sniffles. “I’m not sad—okay, maybe a little. I’m just telling you this because I assume you and Ben are going to have kids one day and…” She looks off to the side for a moment. “Things were bad between my husband and I, more times than not, and sometimes I look back and I feel like that overshadowed moments I should’ve been sharing with my kids. Not that I think you and Ben would be like us,” she hastens to add, “but work, and stress, can make you forget to stop and appreciate the little things. And trust me, when you get to be my age it’s the little things you remember the most.” A smile touches her lips. “Like this one day, the boys knew I had a rough day at work so while I was showering they made me dinner. It was only cereal, but they’d even gotten a flower from the yard and put it in a vase on the table.” She shakes her head. “And it’s one of my favorite memories of them now.”
I smile. “That’s sweet. You raised good boys, Loraine.”
She nods and tears pool into her eyes. “I did, didn’t I?” One tear falls to her cheek, and she wipes it away. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this, but I guess with the wedding coming up I’ve been thinking about my own and the years that followed.”
I get up from my seat and move around the table to hug her.
Loraine is a good woman. She’s always been kind to me, and I know she’s been an amazing mother to Ben and his brother. But I also know from Ben that his father wasn’t always the best. He never hit her—as far as Ben knows—but he was verbally abusive and he says it was hard to watch his mom go through that. I think both boys were relieved when their parents finally split up.
Loraine hugs me back, and I feel her tears dampen my shirt.
When I pull away, she laughs and dabs at her face with her napkin. “Here I was telling you how happy I am about the wedding, and now I’m crying.”
“It’s okay,” I assure her. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
She nods and takes a sip of her wine. “No more tears, I promise.” She crosses her hands and lays them on the table. “Tell me what you have in the works for your business.”
I immediately launch into the details on a big account I recently landed, planning a five-year anniversary party for a local business. I’m sure Loraine is bored by my details on colors, arrangements, food, and other things, but she doesn’t show it. She listens intently and lets me drone on as our food arrives.
Finally, embarrassed, I begin to quiet. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, swirling my pasta around the fork, “I’m rambling.”
“Ah, no, I find it fascinating,” she says. “I never had your kind of drive. I find it remarkable.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
We finish eating and say our goodbyes. I head home and Ben’s already gone for work.
I open the front door and Winnie comes running toward me. When she sees it’s me, not Ben, she immediately turns tail and runs the other way.
I shake my head and drop my keys on the entry table along with my bag.
I kick off my shoes in a haphazard pile. I’ll put them away later.
I grab a bottle of water and head into my office to work. I crank up the music—I hate the silence—and go through my emails. I reply back, answering questions, and booking dates. I still can’t believe how fast my business is growing. Maybe in a year or two I’ll be able to run my business out of a building and not our house.
I open the side drawer of my desk and rummage through it for a new pack of sticky notes. I smile when I find a paper crane hidden among my junk drawer.
I pull it out, forgetting my search for the moment.
I unfold the note and find Ben’s boyish handwriting scrawled across the paper.
“In order to be happy oneself it is necessary to make at least one other person happy.” –Theodor Reik
These words couldn’t be truer. Your happiness is mine. I want to make you smile every day.
—Ben
“You already do,” I whisper, and I am, in fact, smiling. I fold the paper back into the shape of the crane and set it on the side of my desk to add to the growing pile of others. There’s nearly a thousand of them already—I’m missing about fifty, though, plus the days that are left. Ben says he’s written them, and they’re hidden, waiting to be found. I don’t make a habit of searching them out every day. I like being surprised. Sometimes I go days without finding one, and other times I find three in a day. Lately, he’s getting better at hiding them from me, and that’s okay; I always seem to find them when I need them most.
I finish what I’m doing and make a few phone calls. Before I even consider moving my business into a building I should probably hire an assistant. I could use one now so that I don’t have to spend so much time answering emails and phone calls. It would be nice to focus solely on the planning part. I’ll have to talk to Ben about it and see what he thinks. He might be a doctor, not a business owner, but I find his advice invaluable.