Sheila:
The little boys were very sweet, trying to calm me as they were doing. The smaller one still had his hand on my shoulder. He was leaning into me, just like my son used to when he was younger. My son hadn’t been that caring for a long time, seeming to copy his father.
In fact, both of my children had distanced themselves in the last year. My friends had told me, that it was a part of growing up as children naturally weaned themselves from their mothers. But I missed the way we’d sat together while I was reading to them and the way we used to play games on rainy days.
When the older of these boy, Francis, joined the younger one and started talking, I realized how wrong I’d been about what I’d dubbed the ruffians. The boys were merely timid, like most children around strangers, but they had their own charm. Their mother must have loved them and cared for them, the same as I did my two.
I sighed, opening up my heart a bit. It was hard for a mother not to do so when children acted like these two were doing. For the first time, I saw what my mother had tried to tell me. These boys needed someone, but the girl who had taken them in was barely grown herself. How could she properly mother them?
For a moment I recalled the way she’d run up the stairs earlier in those dirty boots and men’s clothing. Ah, the horse. She’d been taking care of the huge beast that had frightened me. That explained her outfit and her tom-boyish nature.
I swallowed my fear and permitted myself to open up to the children a bit more, and began to tell them about my son and daughter. Whether we would all be a family, that was something I’d place on the back burner, but for now, surely talking about my children would be okay, I supposed.
“My daughter is named Dafny. Her father named her after his mother. Dafny is eleven years old and thinks she’s all grown up. She’s her father’s daughter, preferring to chat with him about things that happened at school or asking for a new dress or a book. She loves to read, you see. She also likes to do stitchery. She’s trying to embroider a pillow with the family crest, but she keeps getting the threads all tangled. She comes to me to fix that.
“My son’s name is David, same as his father. David Junior is nine years old. He likes to run. He and his father go running every morning. He’s on a baseball team, but I’m not a part of that. His father is the coach. That’s where the two of them are every Saturday when it’s not raining. David loves gingerbread. Have you ever had that?”
Remembering the cookies I’d made that they hadn’t liked, the boys made a face.
“We like oatmeal cookies,” Carlo responded.
At the mention of cookies, both boys suddenly remembered that they hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.
“I think Martha wants us to go eat now,” Francis said, and with only a brief goodbye, they darted back into the house.