Last night was rough for Eli. I got out of the shower and thought I heard him crying in his room. One look at his reddened face and I knew disaster must have rocked his world.
I looked around....was something important broken? Where is is phone? Did he break his new helicopter?
"What's wrong?"
His voice quivered but he managed to spit out the words "I...Miss...Dad"
He was suddenly, uncontrollably overwhelmed by the absence of his dad.
5 months rushed in like a wave.
A birthday spent with greetings over FaceTime rather than face-to-face was too much.
And he crumbled.
And I freaked out.
I was in my robe at the time, so I told him I'd be right back and went to my room to get dressed.
In between jumping into my jammie bottoms and finding a t-shirt, I sent a panicked text to Matt... "please be there....Eli needs you".
Eli didn't want me or need me, he needed dad and since that was not something I could produce I felt completely helpless. I didn't know what to say, and feared opening my mouth at all would send me into tears. As I struggled to find the words, I got a text from Matt...he can't call right now, this is on me.
With my phone now in hand, I knew my next step.... I pulled up my blog from earlier that day (the birthday post) and read parts of it to Eli. And when I was done I looked up at him, he had stopped crying and tears slowly ran down his face. He was ok.
We spent the next few moments laying on his bed talking about school and ideas to display his baseball cards, prayed and said goodnight.
About a half hour later my phone rang...it was Matt. I went in to Eli's room and found him hiding under the covers with a flashlight and notepad (note to self - revisit this later) then handed him the phone to talk to his dad. They talked for a bit and Eli went back to bed, and Matt texted me..."this is why I need to get OUT".
This morning when Eli wasn't in his room I went in to see what he was doing on that notepad...I couldn't find it. Later, I was passing by my bed and found a note pulled from that notepad and left on my pillow.....
The first page was a note to me thanking me cheering him up and for writing those things about him on my blog. Included in the note was a $20 bill and a $10 amazon gift card. On the back was this....
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