The mini men and I were checking out a map of the world the other night. The boys are drawn to Europe, and we picked out destinations now two years old.
“You were gone 41 days.” Chick’s voice was matter-of-fact.
“I was, and I missed you every second of it.” I spoke to his blue eyes. Chick leaned over and hugged my waist.
I wrote the journal below while on those 41 days, recalling how much I missed them:
The morning’s lilac light shone through the arching sky waking me ever so gently, as if it were trying to tell me something. I crept out onto the cool, proud marble lining the patio. I shivered as I stood there in my boxer shorts.
Naples was gently sparkling its lights at me through the soft fusion light of the bay and the melding sky above. I imagined the local merchants, captains of ferries and their crew downing espressos and traversing the city to start their day.
I missed my sons back home, perhaps they had been calling me through the dawn’s light. Perhaps they were thinking of me, as I of them.
They, like the cars speeding around this Neapolitan city with espresso-fuelled drivers, are my lifeblood, the reason I get up every morning.
I lay silently for a moment, lying on top of the bed, calculating the time back home. It was their bedtime. I whispered secret songs into the air that only my beloved boys could hear and blew kisses high up through the clouds to catch the breeze home.
Home. That word alone lying on my bed on this isle had power to silence my mind and irritate my stomach simultaneously.
I pulled my laptop over to the bed and sent a message to Dawn to get the boys ready to talk to me via Skype. I needed to see them, my heart was sitting in my throat and my breath constricted. The release for now, would be visual and two-dimensional.
The screen was eerily dark for a moment before two little boys stood curiously and obediently in front of the camera on the other side of the world.
“Hello, buon giorno!” I said a little too loudly as I adjusted the screen to see them.
“Hello, Daddy!” almost in unison, their gentle echo followed.
