The Welcome Home at the Elevator

Saturday

I was up at three. Sheila was up before me. We loaded the van in the dark.

Maddie, who is twelve, slept against the window all the way down to Columbus with a poster board on her lap that said Welcome Home Cole in glitter glue. I am not going to pretend I did not read it six times.

At eight-twenty the doors opened.

He came through in olive trousers and a tan T-shirt, the seabag on one shoulder. The cover was tucked under his arm, because they make them take it off indoors. He had lost fifteen pounds.

His neck looked longer and his ears looked bigger, and he was looking for us with the careful face of a man who has been taught not to hope too early.

Maddie saw him first. She dropped the poster and ran.

He caught her one-armed and swung her off her feet, and the seabag slid off his shoulder and hit the floor. Sheila got to him second. She did not say a word.

She put both hands flat on his chest like she was checking he was solid, and then she pressed her face into his shirt and stayed there.

I waited. I am not a man who rushes. He looked at me over his mother’s head, and his chin did something I had not seen since he was nine years old and fell off the barn roof.

“Hey, Dad.” “Hey, bud.” That was all either of us could manage for about a minute. Then I put my arms around the whole pile of them, and I held on.