Chris Jordan - Torn

He asks this regularly, checking in. And I always answer the same way. “Most of the time, sweetie. Nobody is happy all the time.”

He nods, satisfied, and resumes his look out the window, blinking into the wind.

It’s Noah who first spots the plume of smoke when we come around the last corner to our modest-but-if-you-ask-me-perfect farmhouse.

“Mom, smoke!”

“I can see that, sweetie.”

And I can see Shane tending his new Weber grill, looking as serious as any man who ever prepared to burn a hot dog for a soon-to-be-eleven-year-old boy.

He insists on charcoal. No propane gas for Randall Shane.

I know, I know. He’s fourteen years older than me, and that can be a big deal if you let it, which we don’t. Also he’s far from rich, he doesn’t drive a cool car, and his work sometimes takes him far from home. For that matter there’s always a chance, however small, that he won’t come back, that he’ll die trying to save someone else’s little boy or little girl.

I know all that.

But I also know this: we live on borrowed time, all of us, and wasting a day of it-or a lonely night-is a crime. Besides, I love the big guy to pieces. It’s different from Jed, but just as intense. So get out of my face with this he’s-too-old-for-you stuff, I don’t want to hear it.

Sorry…you can take the girl out of New Jersey but…you know how it ends. Happily ever after, if I have anything to say about it.

And I do.