I worked construction during the day and picked up every side job I could at night and on weekends. Fixing a neighbor’s porch. Painting fences. Rewiring a garage for a guy who paid me in cash and a casserole. Whatever it took to keep diapers in the house and the lights on.
And somewhere in those brutal early years, I made myself a silent promise, standing over two cribs at three in the morning.
My sons would never, ever feel abandoned. Not by me. Whatever it cost.
Seventeen years went by the way they do — impossibly slow and then all at once.
And my boys grew into exactly the men I’d hoped for. Cheerful. Kind. Mason, the older by four minutes, steady and thoughtful, the one who remembers everyone’s birthday. Micah, quicker, funnier, with a temper he’d mostly learned to manage and a heart the size of the county. They were best friends and worst roommates. They were, and are, the entire point of my life.
