Dream Makers

A few weeks ago

Lucas and I were driving home

when fun.'s "Carry On"

started playing on the radio.

He loves that song

so I turned it up

and we began to sing it

at the top of our lungs

"...If you're lost and alone.."

Suddenly
like a ghost from the past,

I remembered.

New Year's Eve night

2007.

6 months pregnant with James

5 days after I'd asked his father to leave.

"...Or you're sinking like a stone..."

I had gone to bed early

wanting to sleep through midnight.

I was so sad

and felt I had nothing to celebrate.

2008 was already breaking my heart.

At midnight
the cheers and fireworks

and welcoming of a new year

pulled me from my dreamless sleep.

I laid there,

one arm around Lucas

while the other held my belly

and I began to sob.

A deep, smothering sadness

pulled tears from my eyes

and forced my shoulders to shake.

When my mom came into to kiss us

she found me crying,

threw her arms around me

and whispered,

"It's going to be ok honey,

you're going to be ok."

But I didn't believe her.

"...Carry on..."

Every Mother's Day

since Lucas was born

has been bittersweet.

I've made it about my mom

and tried to enjoy my children,

but I'd be a liar

if I didn't admit that celebrating

without the boys' fathers

always hurt.

Holidays always made me feel

like I'd failed

at making a family.

"...May your past be the sound..."

As Lucas and I sang

down the 605 freeway

I began to cry.

Not out of sadness

but out of joy.

Because I remember

that New Years Eve

like it was yesterday.

I remember feeling

helpless

and hopeless

and

like I'd never get it right.

"...Of your feet upon the ground..."

Saturday night

as we kissed the boys goodnight,

me to Lucas,
Paul to James

and then a switch,

I heard Paul whispering to them about

Mother's Day.

I didn't know what they had planned,

but knew there was nothing I could want

that I don't already have.

"...carry on..."

I awoke yesterday

to bright faces

and breakfast in bed.

Opened crayon decorated packages

to paintings and drawings and handprints.

I got to sit in bed

with coffee and the paper

while Paul manned the kids

and the house.

We went to Ports O'Call

and ate seafood

and snowcones

and I'm just so love in love

with these guys
I could just melt

into a puddle.

We spent the rest of the day

with family

and ended at home

where I discovered

the newly erected planter

and freshly tilled soil

Paul gifted me.

Because I've been talking about

vegetables and snapdragons

and a zillion hopes
for that little corner on our patio

and he made it happen.

Nothing could make my life sweeter.

This life with my three guys

is beyond

my dreams.

"Not me," I thought for so many years.

Girls like me
don't get the happy ending.

But sometimes,
we do.