Chapter 2 - happy again

Home from Iraq, Kyle comes to see me almost every weekend. Me, and "the girls". I was nervous, REALLY nervous, about meeting his children. I've never been especially good with kids and I've NEVER wanted any of my own. My brother has a son, and I can't be around him more than an hour at a time. I just can't deal with it when he starts to cry. I panic - I have no clue what to do.

We went to Kyle's mom's house for a birthday party. Thankfully, I'd already met his mom a couple of times. That's where I met them. The oldest of the girls was turning 4. The two of them sat across from each other at their own special table, with a large white sheet of paper taped across it, coloring anything they could.

I'd seen a picture of them, but wasn't prepared when this curious, wary little face first looked at me. It was like I was being checked out for a job, and my employer was less than 3 feet tall. She seemed to approve, and went back to her coloring. The younger didn't even pause to look up at me.

We adults ate and sat around talking, occasionally venturing outside to check on the girls or smoke a cigarette. Slowly they got to recognize me as someone they knew by face. By the end of the day, the older one let me pick her up when she fell. I had this almost overwhelming sense of "AAWWWWW" permeate through me right about then. Kyle took the girls back to their mother's house, and met me back at my apartment. We talked and hugged and he said he was proud of me, though I'm not exactly sure what for. We went to bed and slept peacefuly.