There and Back Again

          That morning we hardly talked about it at all.  Robert already knew and we told Carson on the drive home from school.  We had planned a get together with friends and family for that Friday so when we got home we went into pre-party mode.  Food was already cooking, wine and tea were purchased and brewed respectively, and the inside table and the outside chairs were cleaned off.

            The children ate outside around the fire pit while the adults sat around the table.  There was no consensus of not talking about it; we just spoke of what we usually do.  People commented on the inclusion of cranberries in a salad or talked about being caught up on their favorite TV shows or what movies they wanted to see.  After dinner we examined wine labels like archeologists over shards of pottery like we knew what we were talking about, and decided which dessert we wanted.  Or just took a sampling of each.   

            People congratulated me on finally finding employment, said our house looked great with the halls decked, agreed that Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Riviera Paradise -which was playing in the background- was a pretty good tune, probably drank too much, definitely ate too much, and generally relaxed from a long week that got a little longer Friday morning.

            The kids were sent to bed and mom and dad crammed as much as possible in the dishwasher before following them.  Sleep came both gratefully and quickly.

            The next day Carson said simply, “I want to see The Hobbit.”  Our finances won’t swing a first run movie excursion right now so I told him maybe after Christmas.  Likely after the new year when paychecks start coming in again.  He wandered around the house muttering the cry of the pre-teen, “I’m sooooooo bored.”  I suggested he read a book, perhaps, oh I don’t know, The Hobbit.  He instead asked if I’d read it to him.  At first I was tempted to tell him he’s too old to have books read to him, but then I decided, why not.

            We lay down side by side on his bed.  I read about Riddles in the Dark and the escape from goblins.  By the time I was describing entering the dark and brooding forest of Mirkwood and struggling with the names of 13 dwarves -I think they are Fili, Kili, Thorin, Bombur, Dasher, Dancer, Groucho, Stucco, Romney, Speedo, Fantine, Prius, and Fiscal, but I could be wrong on a couple of those- Robert came in and lay down on my other side.  I caught a glimpse of Andrea in the doorway snapping a picture with her phone.

            There is something pure and simple about reading to your children.  Something that I know no matter how  many times I did it there still could have been many more.  I haven’t read to them out loud in years so it was nice to come back again.  I know that their innocence is a shadow of what it used to be.  I know they know the horrors of what happened last Friday, but for maybe a half and hour or so they were safe in their beds, warm in their beds, visualizing those forests and caves, and fat and silly dwarves falling asleep in enchanted streams, and a father and mother who love them and will protect them forever.

            I hope their last thoughts as they fell asleep were of fantastic worlds full of magic, where the good guys win and the bad guys always loose.  I know what mine were.