Lola scoots across the floor and leans against my legs. Wyatt crawls into her lap. Gary wedges himself between them. It’s a pile of humans and a goat and love on a living room floor on a Tuesday afternoon in Arizona.
I look down at them. My wife. My son. My unborn child. And a goat who has chewed through approximately three thousand dollars’ worth of furniture and will probably chew through three thousand more.
This is my family.
Built from wreckage and held together by stubbornness and a love so fierce it terrifies me.
I wouldn’t change a single thing.
I run my fingers through Lola’s red hair. She tips her head back and looks up at me. “Scared?” she asks.
“Terrified.”
“Me too.”
“Good.” I lean down and kiss her forehead. “Means it matters, that’s what my dad always told me.”
She smiles. That smile that started all of this.
And it still drops me to my knees.
Every damn time and will until the day I die.