Page 117 of Raff
Lula - 16 years
My grandmother had a lot of favorite phrases. But one I really remembered her saying a lot was, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.”
Raff and I had been very clear about our family planning. We wanted two kids.
We had a lovely baby boy about six months after our wedding. And we fell in love with him, with us, with this new family we’d built for a year and a half before we decided to start trying for our last child.
And got pregnant with twins.
Nine months later, we had another son and our little girl.
Our family was more complete than we’d planned, but we were happier than we thought we could ever be.
I’d always known Raff was a caretaker. I mean, he’d been taking care of me for years. Even when I insisted I didn’t need it. But watching him take care of the kids was incredible.
Like I’d told him years ago, I knew he would be good with them thanks to his laid-back nature, his patience, and his observation skills. When I was completely lost trying to figure out why one of the kids was crying, he was right there with understanding and a solution. Then, when it was handled, a hug for my overstimulated self. He could always talk down a tantrum, convince an overtired kid to go to bed, or handle the random injuries that sent me into an anxiety spiral.
He was a constant source of fun, the creator of belly laughs, the first one to suggest a fort get built in the living room or mud gets played with in the backyard.
I mean, I’d needed to hose him down like a dog no fewer than five times before I let him back in the house after playing in the yard with the kids.
He was, for them, what he’d always been for me: a source of joy, love, understanding, and fun. He was never harsh or impatient or too busy to listen to them tell a story or ask a thousand questions in a row.
Of course, he was also the enforcer of bad habits. Ice cream for breakfast. Late-night-movie-watching. Taking the kids out of school early to go to an amusement park. And maybe I’d find those things frustrating as the slightly less fun parent, but I forced myself to see those things through their eyes. In doing so, all I could think was that the kids would look back on their childhood with nothing but joy. That was the goal, wasn’t it? I just made sure on ice cream breakfast days that lunch and dinner were very healthy. That the kids got to bed early the next night after staying up late. That schoolwork never suffered from the occasional short day.
There was lots of fun for them, but also balance and structure.
The work I’d been doing for years gave me everything I hoped it would. It gave us money for private schools, extracurricular activities, travel—so the kids saw how much there was to the world—and funds for their future needs: cars, college tuition, weddings, whatever they needed.
It also gave me a lot more free time these days. No more late nights in a windowless room at The Bog. I worked from home during projects, so I was always around if the kids were sick or had time off.
As for Raff, well, within two years of us getting together, he had pretty much retired from doing the trips across the South. The club was always growing. There were plenty of others to take his place.
You’d think that too much time together would be toxic. But we thrived. Did he occasionally interrupt my workday with random trips out to get food or to bend me over the desk? Absolutely. But I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“Mom,” my oldest called from the doorway of my office—previously our ‘flex room’ since my original office became a bedroom for our surprise twin—where I’d been doing some work, but a lot of reflecting as I stared out the window.
“What’s up, bud?” I asked, shutting my laptop lid.
“I know what I want for my birthday.”
That was still three months away. But he’d always been a kid who planned ahead.
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“A chuckwalla.”
My eyes narrowed.
“Where is your father? Rafe!”
He came up behind our son, a smile tugging at his lips. “You rang, love?”
“Did you put him up to this?”
“Up to what?” he asked, brows furrowing.
I knew, for work, Raff could be a good liar. But the Rafe I knew and loved and built a life with absolutely sucked at it. He seemed genuinely confused.
