Page 119 of The Woman with the Target on her Back (Grassi Family)

August - 12 years

“What is going on here?” I asked as I walked into the dining room to find Traveler and the kids deep into another craft project.

When it came to time with the kids, Traveler was big on crafts, walks in the woods, and puzzles. Not a day passed that didn’t involve glue of some kind. Often involving glue, leaves and acorns found on a walk, and some DIY thing they were making with all of it.

And every single time, Traveler was right there with them, making something herself.

Though she might not even realize it herself, I thought that doing these things with the kids was a way of her sort of healing her inner child, the one who didn’t get to do all this kind of shit because she was in the middle of an unhappy marriage, then bitter divorce.

I never had any doubts about what kind of mom she would be. All you had to do was take one look at her charitable work to know how huge her capacity for love and nurturing was.

Ever since our first son came out, she’d been all in on the mothering thing.

She’d even stepped down from the non-profit she’d been working on for a few years. Sure, she did still volunteer her time for charities that were near and dear to her, and even brought the kids with her to teach them about giving back to your community, but she’d chosen to make being a mom her full-time job.

“Toilet paper roll craft day,” Traveler explained, waving at the table.

And, sure enough, everything the kids had made, from the colorful Japanese Flying Carps hanging from a stick to the shark binoculars, the bird feeders, and the race cars were made from old TP rolls.

“Haven’t you wondered where all our old toilet paper rolls have gone to?” she asked.

“Not once,” I said, getting a smile out of her as I squatted down next to one of the kids’ chairs.

“Daddy, we made beans!” our second-oldest at six, declared, pointing to the sideboard where a bunch of empty rolls were sitting in a box and filled with dirt.

“We are doing green bean starts in them,” Traveler explained. “They work way better than the plastic trays anyway.”

“Fish,” our three-year-old said, shoving his trio of carp in my face so fast he almost took out an eye.

“You know what I think?” I asked as Traveler rocked our very fussy newborn.

The first three had been relatively easy babies.

“If the first had been this fussy, I don’t think we’d have had this many,” Traveler declared, her head on my shoulder as I had the baby propped up against my legs in bed, rocking him side to side to try to lull him.

We probably would have.

She loved the baby stage, the toddler stage, the little kid stage. She would probably be crazy enough to enjoy the teenager stage when we got there.In only four yearswith our oldest.

God, time felt like it was flying.

“What, Daddy?” our eldest asked.

“I think, since you were so busy working all day on this, that we should have Uncle Lucky drop off pizza tonight,” I said, having noticed when I’d walked past the kitchen that Traveler hadn’t even had a chance to get anything going yet.

We had our meal train going, but sometimes she was so busy with the kids that even getting a tray in the oven took time she didn’t have.

Pizza was always a crowd-pleaser in our house, especially given how infrequently we had it.

What with all the grandmas, aunts, and cousins who loved cooking, as well as Traveler when she had the time and energy, there was usually no reason to order in.

“And,” Traveler said, handing over the baby as I reached for him. “I think we are going to eat on our trays in the living room!” she said, making a big deal out of it, like some grand adventure. When the two of us both knew it was because cleaning up the craft project looked like way too much fucking work after a long day.

We weren’t always an immaculate house kind of family. Toys were almost always scattered around. Muddy shoes rarely found themselves back in their cubbies by the door. There were always at least a few dishes in the sink, no matter how many times we ran the dishwasher.

But we were okay with that.

Life with four kids, we’d decided, should be a little chaotic. Fun should beat out function whenever it could. And time spent with each other should always trump time spent toiling away at endless chores.

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