The Gift
My ******** is in love with a boy named Jacob. And a boy named Eli. And a boy named Troy. But especially Jacob. Oh, and Ben. She loves her some Ben.
She’s only four and I’m not altogether thrilled with her loving any boy yet, but you have to admire her enthusiasm. Each of the boys knows how hard she crushes on them (on a rotating basis), and so do their parents. You should see the way the boys react when she gets near them and switches-on her giggly charm and says, “Hiiiiiiiiii, Jacob...” The boys blush and smile sheepishly and it becomes quite clear that they’d be more comfortable eating ketchup-covered earthworms than talking to a bouncy little girl who professes her love to them on a minute-to-minute basis.
In the car yesterday, The Artist Formerly Known As Barney’s Biggest Fan put her open palms over her chest and said, “Mommy, Jacob is part of my heart.”
I’ve been thinking about that story all morning.
The bullshit on this site can get pretty thick. I like to portray myself alternately as a victim and as a hard-ass oblivious to the fact that he doesn’t have the nuggets to back up his gum-flapping, but the simple fact is that I’m not really either of those characters. I’m just a guy. I have a cubicle job that I complain about incessantly. I drive an eight-year-old car. I have a dog. Just a guy.
But somehow when I walk through the door at night I become something more. I become a king. I have two **** who come running to the door when they hear my keys jiggling outside, and the moment they see me they ram their little heads into my crotch, hug my legs, tell me they love me and ask me how my day was. I have a wife who, after almost 11 years, still takes my breath away. I get to have this life. I get to be this *****, this husband, this person everyone is excited to see. And like my ******** said, they’re part of my heart, too. The biggest part.
We live in a scary, fucked-up time. We’re ******* our planet, we’re ******* innocent people, we’re ******* simple human decency. We walk around in that world every day and there are some days when we can’t help but wonder what tragedy will befall us next, what catastrophe waits around the next corner. We are afraid. But somehow walking through that door every evening and seeing those three faces makes the hell outside vanish. In my view, there could be no greater gift. To love and be loved.
I felt like saying this today because my ******** reminded me of it. I felt like taking the DGM mask off and just being Danny for second. Maybe it’s time we all hit the brakes, if only for a minute, to remember that underneath all of the nastiness and **** we wade through everyday lays a pristine layer of love. Sometimes we have to dig for it, but it’s there.
It’s there.
