I was in my office trying to get a few things done when I heard the sweet little voice of my two-year-old saying, Papa? I stepped into the hall and there was my little man! He wore overalls and held his favorite toy, a cement mixer truck. I scooped him up and kissed his face and I said, Where’s Mama?
Papa, I heard again. And down the hall was my little boy. What I mean is that my son was in my arms and my son was also down the hall. There were two of them. I didn’t know what to do, so I picked up the second one, and now I had my son in either arm.
I heard it a third time: Papa. Further down the corridor, by the men’s room, my son was stumbling towards me doing his toddler robot walk even though I already had one of him in each arm. It’s very difficult to carry three squirming toddlers, but I figured that I could make it to my office. And there he was again, by the elevator.
Now I’m pouring sweat, almost hyperventilating, when I see the mail cart. So I dump out the mail and I put the four of them into the cart. I was reaching for my cell phone and wondering who to call—my wife? 911?—when I see him in the lobby. He sees me too and breaks out a gorgeous smile and throws his arms out wide: Papa!
I put him in the cart.
Through the lobby window there’s my son again in the parking lot, which makes six of them. The poor kids are cramped and whining and two of them are fighting over the toy. But I couldn’t worry about that, because there was one more by the security gate, and another, Jesus Christ, by the highway off-ramp.
Now I have one in each arm and six in the cart, which I’m trying to guide back to my office with a hip, until I see one more on the grass divider of the highway. This was when I thought I might start screaming. But I kept it together, and I waited for the traffic to ease so I could safely maneuver all of us across the lanes and collect my son.
That’s right, I held it together, and you can bet your ass that I would keep holding it together. Even if there were a hundred of them. Even if there were a thousand. Because what else could I do?