Epilogue

Kevin

"Ms. Lily, see what I made." Reid raced up to where I stood with the lady who made all of these special days happen. "It's glitter art!" The sheet of paper he held up was more glitter than paper, and it shed the sparkly bits everywhere.

"It certainly is," she said without batting an eye. "Are you going to take it home to display?"

"Yes!" He pushed it in my direction. "Will you watch it while I go do a puzzle, Daddy?"

I reached out and took it with two fingers. The glue was still wet. Reid darted off again, leaving a trail of multicolored glitter in his wake. "How do you ever get this place clean, Ms. Lily?"

"Oh, we do our best, but there's more glitter in the rug than will ever come out. And some of the other club members complain about finding it everywhere else, but there is nothing the littles love more." She flicked a glance at me. "Except their daddies and mommies, of course."

"I'm not so sure about the order of those things."

"I am." She pointed to the artwork I still held. "If you want to set that on the table over there with the others, you can pick it up when you're leaving. Also, there's a stack of manilla envelopes to slip them in just in case you prefer to minimize the amount that permeates your car."

"There will be enough on Reid," I grumbled, but I wasn't really mad.

"Would you want us to stop having glitter events?" she asked. "Because if all the mommies and daddies asked, we'd have to do it."

Thoughts of scrubbing the glitter out of Reid's hair, of finding it in the car, in our bed, everywhere were overwhelming. Glitter was the number one reason not to have a little in your life. I almost said to stop, that it wasn't worth the effort. But then I spotted my little who had somehow skirted the puzzle table to end up right back at glitter central. He had a fresh sheet of paper and was smearing glue all over it. Apparently that was the technique that he had used on the art he'd already left with me because the next thing he did was take the lid off a shaker bottle of glitter and pour the contents directly onto the glue-covered sheet.

"Isn't that a lot?" I asked. "Isn't it kind of expensive?"

Ms. Lily shrugged. "Compared to the stations in the main room? The fire play and wax play? The large pieces of dungeon furniture? No, the thing the littles want do not strain the club budget. But answer my question. Would you vote to ban glitter for them?"

Reid was not alone at the table. Three other littles, two boys and a girl with a giant bow in her hair, were also there and of all the tables in the room, there was not one more joyous. One of the boys was meticulously dabbing glue onto the paper and adding tiny amounts of sparkle. The other two seemed to be almost as enthusiastic as Reid. But the one thing all four had in common was the sparkle in their eyes that matched their shimmering art projects. Could I suggest a glitter ban?

"No. In fact, while I might continue to grumble with the others, it's worth every bit of glitter that follows us home to see him having such a good time." I sighed. "I am going to say, however, I think he's had enough of it for tonight, and I'm going to go and see if I can't coax him into a story or something."

"I was just on my way to read one." She reached behind her and held up a book. "It's about autumn in the forest. Lots of gorgeous animal pictures if you think Reid might like to listen?"

"I'll find out." Leaving Ms. Lily to make her way to the story corner, I extricated Reid from his glitter world and towed him off to the restroom to try to clean off at least one layer before we returned to the little room where a circle of boys and girls had surrounded Ms. Lily and her book. "Do you want to go sit with the others, or would you like to sit on Daddy's lap and listen?"

"Lap," he confirmed without a pause. "I sit on your lap."

And so, I sat in one of the armchairs along the wall, set up just for times like this and drew my little into my lap. Ms. Lily was a mesmerizing storyteller, but we'd been here for a couple of hours or more and Reid had been very active the whole time. The young animals of the forest had yet to solve the mystery of why all the leaves were turning colors and then falling off the trees before my sweet boy was sound asleep in my lap.

I stroked his hair and listened to the story. The animals were afraid that the trees were being hurt and thought they had to stop the leaves from falling, but finally a wise badger mommy explained that the trees had to lose their leaves before winter. She assured them that in the spring, they would have brand-new leaves to shade the forest floor and bring nutrients from sunlight right to the roots and all the other parts of the tree. It was told in such a cute and funny manner, I was sorry Reid missed it. But after she finished the story, Ms. Lily replaced it on the bookshelf where anyone could find it.

Next time we came, I'd get it out and read it to my very good boy. Because there would be a next time for Chained and for burgers at Carnie's and tapas at La Ciudad Del Oro where we were going this weekend. And evenings at home watching movies or cartoons. Long, gray winter afternoons making soup together. Summer days at the lake.

Life. Together. With Reid, everything was special and held its own wonder. Even the "glitter art" that he remembered when he woke up and that I couldn't put in an envelope because it was still soggy. If the very worst thing about our relationship was glitter—it was kind of one of the best things too. Because if he loved it—and he did—then so would I.