Page 12 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

Six

Dear Santa, before I explain, how much do you know?

—Dixie’s secret thoughts

DIXIE

Past

I didn’t know something so small could terrify me so deeply.

“I’m gonna break him,” I said worriedly.

“You’re not going to break him, Dix.” Mary laughed. “You’ve done this before. Act like it.”

“I have,” I agreed. “But not with one this small.”

“He’s literally perfectly healthy,” she all but tossed him to me.

Okay, so she was nowhere close to tossing him to me.

She did, however, not play into my worries and placed him into my arms despite my protests.

I hadn’t been in the room for John to be born.

I’d been driving back from Oklahoma, and she’d called me to let me know she was in labor—three and a half weeks early, might I add.

The only reason I’d agreed to go on the damn poker run was because she’d convinced me that it would be my last one for a while.

I’d reluctantly gone and look what freakin’ happened.

“One more little push, Ms. Normus,” the doctor urged.

“What?” I asked, somewhat startled.

“It’s only the placenta,” the doctor said.

“Oh,” I said as I looked down at the newborn baby in my arms.

John David Normus.

“Gee whiz, he’s small.” I moved so that my wife could see him in my arms, and hopefully correct me if I was doing anything wrong.

“Go sit down, Dix,” she ordered. “I’m kinda busy here, and can’t hold your hand.”

I gasped. “Are you telling me that you can’t take care of me, a baby, and yourself?”

She flipped me off, and I did as instructed, heading to the chair in the corner of the room.

I started rocking the moment that I was ass to wood, my hand coming up to smooth through the shock of white hair.

“So it showed,” I said to no one in particular.

“What showed?” Mary asked, twisting her head to look at me with so much love in her eyes that it sort of hurt to breathe.

I pulled a few strands up with two fingers and showed her, causing her to giggle.

“It’s a dominant trait, Dix. I told you this with Mark,” she pointed out.

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