Husband left this afternoon on a business trip.  It is not long, less than a week, but it is unusual and the boys and I feel its strangeness.

He had been gone perhaps an hour.  The boys and I finished the chapter book we had been reading together.  I cleaned the kitchen.  Carter laid out a large blanket in their room and set up their disco ball while Cody picked out some music.

Cody came through the kitchen pushing a chair load of stuffed owls, invited guests to their dance party arriving by chair chariot, as I was loading the dishwasher.

cody:  Momma, it feels odd with Poppa gone.  It feels like a piece – if you were to think of our family as a puzzle – a piece of our puzzle is missing.  And Poppa is that piece.

He says all this without stopping, without missing a stride, simply saying what he feels, as if he did not just drop some beautiful poetry and walk away.

Happy Father’s Day Husband – I agree with Cody, you are a piece of our wonderful family puzzle and without you, life would not be as it should.