Circles

Coming home to family is unusal to me. 

Everybody is normally in tow.  On the rare moments when I escape my family, I get the joy fathers and working mothers must experience daily, that of coming home.  Saturday afternoon I managed to extricate myself for a mile of lap swimming during nap time.  I left all three men snoozing away on a couch, a bed and in a crib.  Two of them were snoring, like always. 

I arrived home with chlorine drenched hair, itchy skin and goggle marks on my face.  The car was in the driveway, but the house was empty.  After calling out names, I guessed that they had not gone to the park, so I took my still dripping body to the backyard.  There, on a bench that was stolen from a restaurant fifteen years ago by an old friend of my husband’s, my three guys sat together. 

When I saw them like that, all in a row, an arrow shot straight through my heart.  My entire world fits on one wrought-iron bench.  And there is still space for me.

I waited until they saw me to approach.  Each pair of eyes lit up at the sight of me.  Soon, eager beseechments called me to take my spot on the bench.  They wanted to show me their new laugh.

It was a video forwarded to us from that same friend who had stolen the bench a lifetime ago.  And there you go: another of life’s loop-de-loops circles us, making us just that much tighter.