I woke up at the crack of dawn on Mason’s birthday so I could get through my morning routine and be ready in time to pick up Natalie from the airport. She had booked a seat on the first flight from Atlanta to Lexington, knowing we had a long drive ahead of us.
Dawn, otherwise known as Superwoman, worked double duty, running up and down the stairs while I was on the commode to make sure Mason’s birthday donut was ready and waiting on the kitchen table in case he woke up while she was helping me in the shower. By seven o’clock, she had me dressed and ready for the day, but the birthday boy was still asleep.
I rolled down the hall and rapped my knuckles lightly on his closed door. “Good morning, Mason!” I called softly as I pulled down on the handle and pushed open the door.
As the light from the hall spilled into his darkened room, Mason stirred and sat up slowly. “Is it morning?” he asked groggily.
“It sure is!” I wheeled over to one of his windows and pulled back the curtains to let the sunlight in. The sky was partly cloudy, but the weather forecast had shown no chance of rain. It looked like it was going to be a perfect day for an adventure.
“You’re in your old chair!” Mason said delightedly as I parked my power chair beside his bed.
“Yup.” I preferred my manual chair, but I knew it would be difficult for me to wheel myself around Dinosaur World in the summer heat. “You know what day it is, right? It’s July third. Five years ago today, your momma and I welcomed you into the world.”
A lump rose in my throat as I recalled the moment I’d heard his first cry in the delivery room – one of the happiest moments of my whole life. “It’s a boy!” the doctor had announced as she held up the squalling, red newborn for the room to see. She’d let me cut the cord before laying Mason on his mother’s chest.
I remembered turning back to Kristin as she lay in the hospital bed, looking exhausted but elated. “You did it, baby,” I’d told her, wiping the sheen of sweat off her forehead before I bent down to kiss it. “I’m so proud of you.”
Five years later, I liked to think Kristin would say the same thing if she could look down and see Mason and me now. Although the future hadn’t turned out the way either of us had planned, I hoped she would be proud of me for raising our son as a disabled single father, surrounding myself with family and friends who could help me give him the childhood he deserved.
“Happy birthday, baby boy,” I said, swallowing hard, and opened my arms. “C’mere and give your old man a hug.”
Mason grinned. “I’m not a baby,” he protested, but he pushed back the covers and crawled onto my lap anyway.
“I know… and I’d like to think I’m not an old man, at least not yet. But you’ll always be my baby,” I replied, hugging him to my chest. “You are getting awfully big, though. You’re not gonna fit on my lap for much longer if you keep growing like this.”
Mason giggled, but the thought of not being able to hold him anymore broke my heart. He had always loved to sit on my lap and ride around with me in my chair, and I loved it when he did. I couldn’t carry him on my shoulders or give him piggyback rides like most dads; this was the closest we could come to that kind of father-son experience. But it was already getting harder for me to push my manual chair with him perched on my knees. Even in my power chair, I struggled just steering us down the hall to the elevator without bumping into the walls. “Race ya to the bottom?” I said as he reached up to push the button for me.
“Last one there’s a rotten egg!” Mason replied, scrambling off my lap. He ran down the stairs as I rode down in the elevator, beating me easily. He was waiting for me when the elevator door opened on the first floor. “I won!”
“Yeah, you sure did. I’ve gotta get those elevator guys out here again to make this thing go faster,” I said, shaking my head as I backed out of it. “You ready for breakfast?”
I followed him into the kitchen, where Dawn was waiting with his birthday donut, a chocolate cake donut with sprinkles on top and a number five candle flickering from its center. “Happy birthday to you!” we both sang as Mason walked over to it. “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Mason… Happy birthday to you!”
Dawn clapped as he blew out his candle. “Happy birthday, Mason!” she said, coming over to hug him from behind. “Five years old… I can’t believe how big you’re getting!”
“That’s what Daddy said,” Mason replied as he sat down at the table, ready to dig into his donut.
“That’s because it’s true,” said Dawn, catching my eye over the top of his head. She knew better than me how quickly time went by when it came to raising kids.
After a quick breakfast, Dawn and Mason went back upstairs to change out of their pajamas while I cleared the table, carefully carrying the stack of plates on my lap as I rolled across the kitchen. By the time I finished loading the dishwasher, they’d both come back downstairs, dressed for a hot day outdoors. Mason’s t-shirt had a tiny-armed T-Rex on the front with the words, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your… oh…”
We had decided to take the van so Dawn could drive, since our destination was over two hours away. As much as I loved to be behind the wheel, I wasn’t used to driving that far with hand controls and worried my arms would get tired. I rode in the back with Mason while Dawn drove us to the airport to pick up Natalie.
When we arrived, we all went inside to wait by baggage claim. Mason carried the sign Dawn had helped him make, a hot pink poster board with “WELCOME, NATALIE!” printed in his wobbly preschooler handwriting (which wasn’t all that different from my wobbly quadriplegic handwriting).
I craned my neck to check the arrivals screen. “Looks like her plane just landed a few minutes ago. She should be coming down that escalator soon,” I told Mason, motioning to it.
“What does she look like again?” he asked.
I took out my phone and swiped through the selfies she’d sent me to find one that was appropriate to show Mason. “She’s pretty, huh?”
Studying the photo, he nodded but said nothing.
“More importantly, she’s a nice person,” I added, not wanting him to think her appearance was all that mattered to me. “She’s so excited to meet you.”
After a few minutes, a flood of people began streaming down the escalator. I searched for Natalie’s face in the crowd. Finally, I spotted her among the other passengers. She was wearing khaki green shorts with a white tank top and tennis shoes, her hair pulled back into a messy bun.
“There she is,” I said, pointing her out to Mason. “Hold up your sign.”
When Natalie saw the bright pink poster, her face split into a wide grin. She stepped off the escalator and hurried toward us. “Hi!” she said excitedly. She started to bend down to hug or kiss me first, then apparently thought better of it and knelt in front of Mason instead. “Happy birthday, Mason! It’s so nice to finally meet you! I’m Natalie. I love the sign you made for me!”
Mason smiled but didn’t reply. “What do you say?” I prompted him.
“Thank you,” he mumbled shyly, looking down at his feet.
I offered Natalie an apologetic shrug. “It takes him some time to warm up to new people.”
“No problem,” she said, smiling briefly at me before looking back at Mason. “I have something for you, too.” She held out her hand to show him a gold pilot wings pin with the Delta logo in the middle. “I heard you like planes. How would you like to be a junior pilot?”
Mason nodded eagerly, watching with fascination as she pinned the wings onto his t-shirt. “Thanks!” he said without needing to be reminded that time.
I grinned at Natalie, wishing I could give her a thumbs up. She smiled back as she rose to her feet, leaning in to give me a quick peck on the lips while Mason was looking down at his wings. “New wheels?” she asked as she straightened up, noticing I was in a different wheelchair.
“Old, actually.” I cleared my throat, feeling self-conscious. The power chair was so big and bulky compared to my manual chair. It made me look more disabled than I wanted to appear. “I don’t use this one very much anymore, but I figured it would be easier for me to get around Dinosaur World in this than my manual chair.”
Natalie nodded. “That makes sense. You know I don’t mind pushing you, though.”
I know – but I do mind, I thought but didn’t say so out loud, deciding to save that conversation for a different time. Instead, I smiled and said, “I’m happy you’re here.”
“Me too!” She beamed at me before turning to Dawn. “How ya doin’, Dawn?” she asked as she hugged her tightly.
“I’m great!” Dawn replied. “Ready to go see some dinosaurs – right, Mason?”
Finally looking up again, Mason nodded eagerly. “Can we go now?”
I glanced at Natalie. “Do you need to pick up any checked bags?” I asked.
“Nope.” She patted her expertly-packed carry-on. “Let’s go!”
“Yeah!” Mason ran ahead, and Dawn hurried after him, taking him by the hand as they headed toward the exit. I hung back with Natalie, letting the two of them lead the way while we followed at a more leisurely pace. She walked alongside me, holding my left hand while I worked the joystick with my right. One perk of using the power chair: It allowed us to stroll hand-in-hand like a regular couple.
When we reached the van, Dawn put Natalie’s bag in the trunk with the cooler she’d packed before lowering the ramp for me to roll into the back. “You can ride up front with me if you want,” she told Natalie. “It would make me feel like less of a chauffeur.”
Natalie laughed. “Sure!” she said, sliding into the front passenger seat as Dawn fastened the straps that secured my chair to the floor.
“Girls in front and boys in back!” Mason called out as he climbed into his booster seat in the back row and buckled his own seatbelt.
I chuckled. “That’s right, buddy,” I said, trying to maintain my cheerful tone. I didn’t want to sound bitter about being stuck in the back, but I much preferred to be behind the wheel with Natalie by my side.
Once we were on the road, though, it didn’t really matter. Dawn, Natalie, and I listened to music and made conversation while Mason played on his tablet. “What kind of music do you like, Natalie?” Dawn asked as she flipped through the satellite radio stations.
“Careful how you answer that,” I warned Natalie. “Dawn can’t stand New Kids on the Block.”
Natalie laughed. “Oh no! Well, I like a lot of different kinds of music, but mostly country and pop. What about you, Dawn?”
“I’m more of a classic rock kinda gal,” Dawn replied. “Boy bands have never been my thing – no offense, Kevin.”
“None taken,” I said, smiling as she caught my eye in the rearview mirror and winked. “To be fair, boy bands weren’t a big thing when we were growing up in the seventies, unless you count The Jackson 5 or the Bee Gees.”
“Yeah, well, I prefer hair bands,” Dawn said with a shrug.
“I like Bon Jovi,” Natalie offered.
In the end, Dawn settled on an eighties music station that played both pop and rock hits from the decade, and we listened to that for the rest of the drive.
Even with the music blaring, Mason managed to fall asleep in the back seat, but he woke up in time to see the triceratops guarding the entrance into the parking lot. “Look up there,” I said, waving my hand toward a large pterodactyl perched atop a cliff as we passed through a stone arch welcoming us to Dinosaur World. I turned my head to see my son’s eyes light up when he spotted it. More dinosaurs waited for us on the other side, including a T-Rex who loomed over the entrance into the gift shop, where we bought our tickets.
“Wow!” Mason kept saying, pointing out every dinosaur he saw as we followed a paved path through the park. “Daddy, look!”
As he ran ahead of us to get closer to a group of stegosauruses, Natalie laughed. “This is like Heaven for a five-year-old boy, huh?”
“Pretty much,” I replied, laughing along with her. The park was a little rundown, but it was well-designed, with impressive life-size dinosaur statues in natural-looking environments all along the path, which wound its way through the woods in a loop. “It is a neat place – like Jurassic Park without the threat of death.”
“Always a plus,” she said as we strolled down the shady path to the next observation point. I was grateful for the canopy of trees overhead, which provided enough cover to keep me from getting overheated as the temperature climbed into the nineties.
“How many do you see?” I heard Dawn asking Mason as we approached them.
“One… two… three… four!” he shouted, pointing to each stegosaurus as he counted.
“Hey, just like us!” Dawn replied, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Four people… four dinosaurs!”
Mason was delighted by that comparison. “Look, Daddy! There’s you… and that one’s Dawn… and the baby one is me!”
“Which one am I?” Natalie asked, smiling.
Mason pointed to a small stegosaurus in the back. “That one.”
“Aww… they’re a family,” I said. “Let’s get a picture with them.” I turned my chair around, putting my back to the exhibit, and pulled Mason into my lap. Dawn posed behind my chair while Natalie knelt in front of me to get the perfect angle for a selfie of the four of us with the dinosaurs in the background.
“Wow, you’re good,” Dawn said when she saw the photo on Natalie’s phone. “Taken like a true millennial.”
Natalie laughed. “Hardly!”
“Trust me… we Gen X-ers are terrible at selfies, aren’t we, Kevin?”
“Speak for yourself,” I said, chuckling. “My selfie game would be a lot better if I could hold the phone and hit the button at the same time. But I guess that’s what I’ve got a girlfriend for.” I grinned at Natalie. She beamed back at me as we continued down the path.
Soon, we came to a fork where the paved sidewalk curved to the right, while a narrower trail that was covered with wood mulch veered off to the left. A sign with an arrow pointing in that direction said “MAMMOTH GARDEN.”
Mason looked curiously down the new trail. “Can we go this way?”
I glanced down at the mulch. “I dunno if my wheels will make it without getting stuck, buddy,” I said, disappointed. Up until that point, the park had been fully accessible. “Tell you what: you and Dawn can go that way, and Natalie and I will stick with the main path. We’ll see who makes it back to the front of the park first.”
“It looks like a dead end,” Natalie said, consulting the map she’d grabbed at the gift shop. “We can just wait here while they go see the Mammoth Garden and come back.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, why don’t you go with them?” I suggested. “I don’t want you to miss out.”
“I don’t mind. I’d rather hang out here with you,” she insisted, smiling at me. She waited until Mason and Dawn were a safe distance away to tip back my Wildcats baseball cap and kiss me long and deep on the lips. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I missed you, too,” I murmured, wrapping my arms around her waist as I kissed her back. “I’m glad you could come.”
“Me too,” she said, sitting down on a nearby bench. “Thanks for inviting me to celebrate Mason’s birthday with y’all.” She glanced down the trail he had taken with Dawn. “Do you think it’s going okay? I can’t tell if he likes me or not.”
“Give it time. Once he gets to know you better, I’m sure he’ll love you just as much as I do,” I tried to reassure her as I parked my chair next to the bench.
Looking over at me, Natalie raised an eyebrow. “Love me, eh? That’s a pretty strong word,” she said, a little smile playing on her lips.
I felt my face heat up when I realized what I’d said. The word “love” had slipped out of my mouth like it was nothing, but I hadn’t meant it that way. Then again, maybe I had. “Yeah, well, so are my feelings for you,” I admitted. “Maybe ‘love’ isn’t the right word to use this early in our relationship, but I really like you, Natalie.”
“I really like you, too,” she replied earnestly. “I’m just a little hesitant to use the word ‘love’ until I know for sure that this is the real deal. My last boyfriend told me he loved me while he was sleeping with another woman behind my back. I thought I loved him, too, until he broke my heart.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that with me. I mean, yeah, I do let another woman take off my clothes and see me naked everyday, but that’s different,” I added with a wink.
She laughed. “Maybe you should give Dawn the night off and let me do that again tonight.”
Smiling at her, I nodded. “Good idea. I’m sure she’ll be tired from chasing Mason around all day. Poor woman deserves a break.”
Before long, Mason came bounding back up the mulch path, babbling all about the wooly mammoths and the big T-Rex that had been waiting for him at the other end. Dawn had taken plenty of pictures to show us.
“Pretty cool, bud!” I said, smiling at one of Mason posing in front of the T-Rex, his face contorted into an expression of terror as he pretended to run away. “Ready to keep going?”
By the time we made it to the end of the Dinosaur Walk, my face was dripping with sweat. Natalie’s bare skin was slick with perspiration, and Dawn’s curly hair was frizzy from the humidity. Only Mason seemed unbothered by the heat. His flushed face was streaked with dirt and sweat, too, but it broke into a wide grin when he spotted the playground at the end of the path. “Can I go play there?” he asked eagerly, pointing to the jungle gym.
Dawn and I exchanged glances. Recognizing the exhaustion in my expression, she replied, “There’s an indoor museum over to the right. Why don’t we do that first so we can get out of the heat for a bit? We can come back to the playground later.”
“It looks like there’s a place where you can dig for fossils that way, too,” Natalie added, pointing to her map. “Doesn’t that sound fun?”
Mason didn’t look convinced, but he grudgingly walked over to the museum with us, dragging his feet the whole way.
The dark, air-conditioned building was a welcomed escape from the sweltering heat outside. We took our time going through the exhibit, looking at dinosaur bones and fossils. “This is boring,” Mason whined as I read a few of the fun facts on the walls aloud. “I wanna go to the playground.”
“We will, buddy,” I promised him, “but let’s finish the museum first.”
“Hey, Mason, c’mere! Check this out.” Dawn put her arm around him and pulled him aside. As they looked at a large cast of a T-Rex tooth, I heard her talking to him in a hushed tone. “You know your dad doesn’t handle the heat well. He needs some time to cool down before we go back outside…”
I moved away from them, feeling bad because, even on my son’s birthday, it had become all about me and my disability. On one hand, I knew Mason was old enough to hear the hard truths Dawn was telling him, but on the other, I hated being a burden, the one who held him back from having fun.
“Are you okay?” Natalie asked quietly, resting her hand on the back of my neck.
I nodded, taking a long drink of water from the bottle I kept in my chair’s cup holder. “I’m just hot. But I’ll be all right.”
“You are hot,” she said with a suggestive smile and a wink, rubbing my shoulder and down my right arm.
“So are you,” I replied, reaching out to give her a playful swat on the butt as she walked alongside me.
Eventually, we reached the end of the exhibit and went back outside, where there was an excavation area set up with sand pits where the kids could dig for fossils and gems and uncover a life-size dinosaur skeleton. Mason’s eyes lit up when he saw it, and he ran ahead to try it, temporarily forgetting the playground.
I found a patch of shade to park my chair and watch while he played in the sand, but the abrupt change in temperature had taken its toll on me, leaving me with a pounding headache. Realizing this was my body’s way of telling me it couldn’t take much more of the heat, I reluctantly turned to Dawn. “Hey, I think it’s time for me to head back to the van and crank the AC,” I said in a low voice. “Will you come with me? Natalie can stay here with Mason.”
She nodded. “Of course. I could use a break from this heat, too,” she admitted, fanning her hand in front of her face.
When we told Natalie what we were doing, she seemed worried. “I can go with you,” she offered, her brow knitted across her forehead as she looked at me with concern.
“No, it’s okay. Dawn knows what to do for me,” I assured her. “You stay here with Mason. If you don’t mind, maybe take him to the playground for a few minutes when he’s done here and then meet us back at the van. I’ll be fine; I just need to get out of the heat for a while.”
Natalie nodded. “Okay. We won’t be too long.”
I told Mason where we were going, and we went back out through the gift shop, my wheels bumping across the packed gravel parking lot.
When we got to the van, Dawn reached in to start the engine, putting the air conditioning on full blast before she lowered the ramp to let me into the back. While I rolled inside, she retrieved the cooler from the trunk and took out two bottles of water and a package of baby wipes. Then she climbed into the back with me. She twisted the top off one of the bottled waters and poured it into my almost-empty reusable bottle, which had a built-in straw that made it easier for me to drink from. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. As I chugged water, she mopped my face with one of the baby wipes, laying a second across the back of my neck. “How’s that feel?”
The wipes were chilled from being in the cooler, so they felt refreshingly cold on my flushed skin. “Amazing.” I sighed with relief, closing my eyes as Dawn rubbed the rest of my body to help cool down my core. She lifted my t-shirt, leaning me forward to wipe down my back, then took the baseball cap off my head and dripped some of the cold water from her bottle into my sweat-soaked hair. “Thanks, Dawn,” I said as she pulled down my shirt and pushed my upper body against my backrest.
“Don’t mention it,” she replied, squeezing herself into the driver’s seat. We listened to music with the engine running until Natalie and Mason came back to the van. Mason was clutching a shopping bag.
“Look what Natalie bought me!” he announced as he climbed in, wasting no time in taking a toy T-Rex out of the bag. He pushed a button on the tyrannosaur’s back to make it roar.
“Wow! That was really nice of her. Did you remember to say thank you?” I asked, glancing from him to Natalie as she slid into the passenger seat, her face flushed from the heat.
“Yeah,” said Mason, and she nodded in confirmation.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I told her quietly as Mason buckled himself into his booster seat in the back.
“I wanted to! Consider it a birthday present,” she replied, smiling. “Are you feeling better?”
I nodded; the heat and pain in my head had finally subsided. “Much. Thanks for keeping an eye on him for me.”
“No problem! It was nice to have a chance to bond with him a bit. We had fun on the playground – right, Mason?” she called back to him.
“Uh-huh.”
“Good,” I said, handing them both bottled waters from the cooler. It made my heart happy to hear that they were getting along.
Dawn drove us to a nearby restaurant for lunch before we headed back to Lexington. Looking out my window, I saw a sign for nearby Mammoth Cave, the longest cave in the world. I had gone there as a kid and would have loved to take Mason while we were this close, but when I’d called to ask about accessible cave tours, I was told there were none that could accommodate wheelchairs. “I’m sorry, sir,” the woman on the phone had said. “Our cave elevator has a broken cable, so that section of the cave is currently under renovation. We hope to have it back up and running sometime in the next four years.”
“Four years?” I’d repeated, blinking in disbelief. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Although the world had come a long way with accessibility, there would always be parts of it that were off-limits to me now that I was paralyzed. Of course, I had been to plenty of cool places and witnessed many natural wonders when I could walk, but it was still disappointing to know I wouldn’t be able to share some of those same experiences with my son.
All the more reason to remarry someday, I thought, my eyes wandering to Natalie, so Mason will have another parent to take him on the kinds of adventures I can’t.
As if she could sense me watching her, Natalie suddenly turned around and smiled at me. “Are you sure you’re okay? You got quiet all of a sudden.”
I nodded, smiling back at her. “I’m fine. Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“I dunno.” I shrugged. “The future… and the past…”
“How about the present?” she asked, batting her eyelashes.
In the backseat, Mason’s ears must have perked up. “Present?” he said, misunderstanding. “What present?”
I laughed. “Natalie already gave you a present, remember? The rest of your birthday presents are waiting for you at home, buddy.”
When we got back to the house, Mason was eager to open his other gifts. Dawn, Natalie, and I watched while he tore the wrapping paper off his new toys and games. We taught him how to play Twister, spreading the colorful mat out across the living room floor. I manned the spinner, laughing as I watched Mason, Dawn, and Natalie contort their bodies into increasingly painful-looking positions, their limbs tangling together.
“Right foot, red,” I called, looking down at where the plastic arrow had landed.
Dawn groaned, her arms trembling as she tried to lift her right foot off the ground. “I’m getting too old and fat for this game. I give up,” she said before finally collapsing to the floor.
Natalie proved to be much more flexible. Her yoga experience paid off as she pulled out some impressive moves, stretching her arms and legs to the farther circles so that Mason could occupy the ones closer to him. She would have won if she hadn’t let her butt touch the mat at the last minute, allowing the birthday boy to beat her.
“Way to go, buddy!” I gave Mason a fist bump, winking at Natalie when he wasn’t looking.
That evening, we enjoyed a birthday dinner fit for a five-year-old: cheese pizza with chocolate cake for dessert. Afterward, as we sat in the living room, watching the Disney Channel while we let our food digest, I cleared my throat. “Hey, Mason, I almost forgot… I’ve got one more gift for you out in the barn.”
“Really?” His eyes lit up as he looked at me.
I nodded. “Race you there?”
Mason jumped up from the couch and made a mad dash for the front door as I followed on his heels, pushing myself out onto the porch. While I rolled down the ramp, he leaped right off the top step and ran ahead of me down the path that led to the barn. I heard high-pitched laughter from Natalie and Dawn as I pumped my arms, hurrying to catch up to him. After spending most of the day puttering around in my power chair, it felt good to be back in my manual one. Thankfully, the temperature had dropped as the sun went down, though the air was still thick with humidity. By the time I reached the barn door, I was breathing hard, and my shoulders were burning.
Mason was waiting for me at the threshold. “I won!” he announced.
“I know. You’re just too fast for me anymore,” I said, shaking my head.
“You’re both too flippin’ fast for me!” Dawn called, walking over with Natalie as I opened the door.
Waiting inside the barn was a shiny new bicycle, lime green with black accents and training wheels on the back. Dawn had tied a big red bow onto the handlebars. A matching helmet sat on the seat. “Wow!” Mason cried as he ran over to it, picking up the helmet so he could run his hand across the seat.
His reaction made me smile. “Do you love it?”
He nodded. “Thanks, Dad!”
“You’re welcome, son. Tell Dawn thank you, too – she’s the one who put it together.”
“Thanks, Dawn!” Mason ran over to hug her, burying his head in her belly.
“You’re welcome, kiddo,” Dawn replied, ruffling his hair.
“That’s a cool bike, Mason!” Natalie exclaimed, coming closer to admire it.
“He was getting pretty big for his tricycle,” I told her. “Now that he’s five, it’s time he learned to ride a two-wheeler. Whaddya say, Mase? Wanna give it a try?”
Looking up, Mason nodded again eagerly.
“Helmet first,” I reminded him.
Dawn helped him fasten the helmet’s chinstrap, then held onto the handlebars to stabilize the bike as he climbed onto it. Mason put his feet on the pedals and pushed forward. Before long, he was riding in circles around the barn.
“You’re ready to take it outside, son,” I said. “Want Daddy to ride with you?”
“Yeah!”
“You have your own bike?” Natalie asked me, raising her eyebrows in surprise.
I nodded, glancing up at Dawn, who nodded back. I needed her help to get in and out of my handcycle, a recumbent trike I could pedal with my arms. “I bought this baby a couple years ago when Mason got his tricycle,” I replied as Dawn rolled it over. “I wanted us to be able to ride together.”
“How awesome!” Natalie looked impressed. “I’ve never seen one like that before.”
Dawn helped me transfer from my chair to the handcycle, which sat low to the ground. She wrangled my spasming legs into the footrests and wrapped a Velcro strap around my knees to keep them together while I tightened my wheelchair gloves with my teeth. “How long do you think you’ll ride?” she asked as she handed me my helmet.
“I dunno… maybe half an hour?” I guessed, glancing at Mason. “It’s gonna get dark soon. We’ll probably just go down the driveway and back.”
Dawn turned to Natalie. “Why don’t we go grab something to drink? We can sit on the porch, watch the sunset, and have a little girl talk while these guys ride.”
“Sounds good,” Natalie said, nodding. “Y’all have fun now!” She followed Dawn back to the house as Mason and I headed down the tree-lined driveway, which was over a quarter of a mile long.
“So, did you have a good birthday?” I asked Mason, waiting until we were out of earshot to get his opinion on Natalie.
“Yeah!” he replied, his little legs pedaling up and down as he rode beside me.
“What was your favorite part?”
“Sharptooth!”
I chuckled. “I should have known. That T-Rex looked pretty fierce.” I pushed the hand crank around and around, struggling to keep up with him. Once we were a safe distance from the house, I asked, “What do you think of Natalie?”
Mason shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. She’s nice.” He didn’t sound especially enthusiastic, but I supposed I should have known better than to expect a detailed review from my five-year-old. Mason had always been a man of few words.
“Does that mean you like her?”
“I dunno.” He shrugged again. “I guess so.”
“Good. ‘Cause I really like her, and I want y’all to get along.”
He glanced over at me. “Is she gonna be my new mom?”
The question caught me off-guard. “I… I dunno. Not right now… but maybe someday,” I said, thinking back to my earlier reflections on the ride home from Dinosaur World. “If we ever got married, she would be your stepmom. But it’s way too early for that – we’ve only known each other a few months. Your momma and I dated for almost eight years before we got married.”
A lump rose in my throat as I thought of Kristin, wondering how she would feel about me introducing our son to another woman. I hoped she would be happy for me and wouldn’t feel like I was trying to replace her. I didn’t want Mason to think that either.
“No matter what happens with me and Natalie, your momma will always be your momma, even though she’s in Heaven,” I added. “You know that, right?”
He nodded.
“I love you, buddy.” I swallowed hard as we reached the bottom of the driveway. “And so does she. I’m sure she’s looking down on you right now and smiling. She must be so proud of the big boy you’re becoming.”
Mason smiled as he slowed to a stop beside me. “Love you too, Dad.” Then he tipped his head back to look up at the darkening sky and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Love you, Mom!”
My eyes prickled with tears. When had he started calling us “Dad” and “Mom” instead of “Daddy” and “Mommy”? I wondered, marveling over how fast he was growing up. The four-and-a-half years since I’d lost Kristin had been the longest, hardest years of my life, yet somehow, in the blink of an eye, our baby boy had become a five-year-old. I couldn’t believe Mason would be starting kindergarten in just over a month.
I had to look away from him to hide my tears as we turned our bikes around, putting our backs to the setting sun.
***