Florida, 2010
“I’d better find three little munchkins in their beds,” Claire called out, as she headed up the stairs toward her kids’ rooms.
She reached the top and turned into Luke’s room, depositing, on top of his dresser, all the goodies she’d collected on her way up the stairs. He and his sisters could sort them by owner and put them away tomorrow.
She glanced at his bed, noticing it was empty, and bent down to straighten his Stars Wars sheets. The ten-year-old was a Star Wars fanatic. Claire blamed Jack for that. Their first date in college had been to the dollar theater to see The Empire Strikes Back. If that hadn’t been a clear sign of things to come, she wasn’t sure what was. And now that she had Luke, she even participated in it, up to a point, buying him not just Star Wars bedding, but Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca or Darth Vader costumes she found on clearance the day after Halloween. At last count, she’d purchased her thirteenth light saber. Who knew that something designed to be so powerful would have such difficulty withstanding the battles of a ten-year-old boy? Yes, Luke was his daddy through and through. And, with soft brown eyes, a row of freckles on his nose and legs that seemed to go on for miles, he also looked like a mini-version of Jack.
Claire paused to glance at a photo, tacked to the bulletin board, of the two men in her life. It’d been taken last summer. They were standing on a fishing dock, Luke proudly holding up his catch—the first fish he’d ever caught by himself. It was miniscule—not big enough to keep—but he had a grin from ear to ear which was almost as big as the one his daddy wore. Jack had been so proud of his boy.
“Did you see the way he reeled that baby in?” he’d asked her, for the twentieth time that night as she was dressing for bed. “He’s a natural fisherman. Just like his dad. Just like his granddad.”
Claire smiled, brushing her hair and inspecting her reflection in the mirror. At thirty-five, she had to admit she looked good for her age. With her thick, brown hair in a ponytail, which it often was, she was commonly mistaken for a teenager. She never tired of seeing the looks on people’s faces when she told them that, not only did she have three children, but the oldest of them was ten! If the expressions of shock didn’t make a woman feel good about her appearance, she didn’t know what would.
“All you have to do is look at him to know he’s got your DNA running through him,” she said, walking over to the bed and pulling her nightgown over her head. “Sometimes I wonder if any of mine got in there.”
Jack laughed and pulled her down next to him. “Oh, he’s got a part of you in him, too, babe,” he whispered into her neck.
“Yeah?” Claire asked. “Where is it? His feet?”
“No,” Jack said, hugging her closer to him. “His heart. He’s got the sweetest heart I’ve ever seen in a little boy. He practically cried when I took the hook out of the fish’s mouth, asking if I was hurting him. He’s got a heart as pure and gentle as his mama’s.”
Claire smiled now, remembering the comment. It’d been just the right thing to say. Jack always seemed to know the right thing to say to make her feel special.
“Hmmm,” Claire said loudly, remembering she was supposed to be playing an impromptu game of hide-and-seek with her kids. “I don’t see Luke in his bed. Where is he? Maybe he’s in the closet?”
Claire grabbed two of the clean shirts that were stacked on Luke’s desk chair, folded them and put them away in his drawer.
“I still can’t find Luke anywhere! Where on earth could he be?” She smiled at the giggling she heard coming from somewhere down the hall as she hung up three pairs of pants in his closet.
“Maybe he’s under the bed,” Claire said, with mock loudness, as she placed some underwear and socks in their appropriate drawers. The giggling was getting louder, and Claire wondered if the kids might just burst if she didn’t put a stop to it soon.
Sitting down on the vacant bed, she paused to catch her breath before walking into the chaos she was sure was ahead of her. She’d never realized having three children would be such an exhausting task. When she was a little girl, and even as a teenager, she used to tell her mom she wanted to have eight kids when she grew up.
“Eight?” her mom would ask, her face a mixture of shock and humor. “Are you sure about that? Eight is a lot.”
“Eight is enough,” Claire would say, chuckling as she remembered the Dick Van Patten television series she’d enjoyed so much growing up.
“Okay, well then,” her mom would say, “you have one child and get back to me on whether or not you still feel that way after a few months of sleepless nights and endless diapers.”
Claire had always rolled her eyes at her mom. After all, what did her mom know about having a big family? She’d only had Claire and oftentimes, seemed overwhelmed by just her. Her mom wasn’t cut out for a lot of kids, but somehow, Claire had always thought she, herself, was.
Of course, her mom had been right—up to a point. Eight kids had no longer seemed like such a brilliant idea after Claire had had three. Three children, in fact, had almost done her in. She remembered how, after the twins were born, Jack would come home from work, look at her, still in her pajamas from the night before, her hair a wild mess and food and booger stains on her clothes, and say to her, “Are we drowning?”
“Oh, we are so drowning,” she’d say to him. And mean it. There were days when she wondered what she’d been thinking getting pregnant again after Luke. One child had been so manageable. In retrospect, so easy. But three? Forget it. She was just doing her best to make it through each day.
When people would ask her, “Do you think you’ll have any more kids?” she’d always laugh and say, “Oh, no, the twins were our grand finale.”
She understood now the amusement of her mother when Claire had said she wanted to have eight children. Though she’d had only one child, her mom had realized that, along with the immense joy of being a parent, came incredible struggles, frustration, and exhaustion. Claire sighed as she once again felt a pang of regret that she’d never been able to tell her mom how she now understood what she’d meant.
Neither her mom nor her dad had had the chance to see Claire as a mom to even one child. Both of her parents had died while she was in college—her mom of cancer her freshman year and her dad of a heart attack three years later. Though Claire always tended to believe he died less from an attack of his heart than from a break in it. The happy-go-lucky father she remembered from her childhood couldn’t be reconciled with the man he became after they lost her mom. He hadn’t known what to do without the wife he’d loved faithfully and so completely for twenty-eight years. And, though Claire missed them both terribly, she also tended to believe it was best they were together. She’d been able to forge a life of her own after they were gone, but she never truly believed her dad, even if he’d lived until the age of eighty, would’ve been able to do that without her mom. Some people were meant to be together, whether it be in this life or the next.
Claire sighed and called out again, her voice thick with exaggerated sorrow. “I guess Luke must’ve run away. That’s too bad. I’ll miss him. He was such a nice boy. I think I’ll go kiss Ella and Lily goodnight now.”
She stood, gave the room a quick once-over and then turned out Luke’s light, making her way down the hall into her girls’ room.
A mound of covers, apparently hiding three little bodies, awaited her as she walked into her twins’ pink and yellow room. Claire might have thought the girls had piled all of their stuffed animals underneath if she couldn’t visually see the mound shaking and shuddering with each little giggle.
“Oh, no! The girls are gone, too!” Claire said, trying to muster as much agony as was possible in her voice, as she made her way to the bed. “Boy, am I tired, and this bed looks so comfy! I think I’ll just lie down for a little nap.”
Claire plopped her body right on top of the enormous pile, careful to not injure anyone underneath.
“Mommy! Get off!” a muffled voice cried from beneath her.
“Ow! That hurts!” a boy’s voice complained.
“Mom! We’re under here!” another little voice cried out.
Claire jumped up, her hand to her chest.
“Oh! There’s something under there!” Claire exclaimed. “Whatever could it be?”
With a single motion, Claire grabbed the comforter and yanked it to the floor. Three small faces peeked up at her.
“What are you doing under there?” Claire asked, with such surprise in her voice that she, herself, almost believed she was startled by their appearance. “I thought you’d run away!”
“We wouldn’t run away, Mommy,” little Ella said. “We like living here.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” Claire replied, tweaking her daughter’s nose. “Because I like you living here, too.”
Claire picked the comforter up and straightened the covers over the three children. They each got comfortable, snuggling deep into the pillows as she sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Now, what are you all doing in here?” she asked her babies. Despite the fact that Luke was ten and the twins had just turned six, she still viewed them as just that—her babies—and had a feeling she always would. “If I remember correctly, Daddy and I bought each of you your own bed.”
Lily yawned. “We like to sleep together.”
“I’m not scared at night if Luke and Lily are with me,” Ella replied.
Claire glanced at Luke. “And what about you, mister? What are you doing in here?”
“I’m not scared like the girls,” he said defensively. “I just stay here to protect them.”
Claire tousled his hair. It was hard to not smile at this child, part little boy, part little man.
“Well,” she said gently. “That’s what big brothers are for. Do you know how lucky you all are to have each other? When I was a kid, I’d have done anything to have brothers and sisters.”
With a look of disgust directed at his sisters, Luke said, “You were lucky. You didn’t have little kids to drive you crazy!”
“No, I didn’t,” Claire replied softly. “But I also didn’t have anyone to play with or talk to when my parents were busy with grown-up stuff. You three will always have each other.”
The girls smiled at her words, but Luke rolled his eyes at Claire, in much the same way she used to roll her eyes at her own mom. Claire smiled at him. She knew he loved his sisters dearly, even if it was no longer cool in fifth grade to admit it.
“Now then,” she said. “It’s bedtime. No one in my room before seven a.m. You hear me?”
“Okay,” they all said in unison.
“And, if you go downstairs to watch TV, it had better not be loud enough to wake me and Daddy.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Whose turn is it to pray?” she prompted.
“Yours,” Luke said.
“Are you sure?” Claire questioned, as the kids all nodded.
“Okay, then. Dear God. We thank you for our blessings and that we had a great day as a family. Please take care of those we love. Amen.”
“Amen,” the children said in unison.
“Mommy,” Lily said sleepily. “Can you sing to us?”
“Sure,” Claire whispered, with a smile. This was one of her favorite parts of the bedtime ritual, though, as the kids had gotten older, she found she didn’t do it as often. It wasn’t that she didn’t still like to sing to them, or that they didn’t still love to hear her. It was that once all three kids started school, bedtime had become more hectic. There were teeth to be brushed, hands to be washed, homework that was left to the very last minute. Sometimes, bedtime consisted of nothing more than a quick goodnight peck on the cheek and an “I’ll see you in the morning.”
But on weekend nights, such as tonight, when there was no rush to make sure those little eyes closed quickly, Claire enjoyed taking a few extra moments with the kids as she put them down for the night. She paused for a moment as she thought of what to sing, and then decided on their favorite. It was an old, classic Irish lullaby she’d been singing to the children since they were each in her belly. The twins closed their eyes as she began, but Luke stared straight at her.
“Over in Killarney, many years ago, me mother sang a song to me, in tones so sweet and low. Just a simple little ditty, in her good old Irish way. And I’d give the world if she could sing, that song to me this day.”
Claire’s voice drifted softly through the room, beautiful and pure. There was a time when people had paid money to hear her sing, but these days, she sang solely for her children.
“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don’t you cry!
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that’s an Irish lullaby.”
Claire was fairly certain the girls had fallen asleep by the second line, but Luke’s eyes had stayed open, til nearly the very end, when, despite his best efforts, his lids dropped, and he turned to get more comfortable next to his sisters.
Claire stared down at her children. Somehow, no matter how much love she felt for them during the day, it always seemed to intensify as she watched them sleep. She rose and walked to the door. Pausing, she glanced back at her sleeping babies, turning off the light to the girls’ room. She was blessed, and she knew it. Life with three kids wasn’t ever easy, but she also couldn’t help but wonder how a girl like her had gotten so lucky.
“I love you,” Claire said softly into the darkness, as she turned and walked away.