“Uncle Lukey, Dean, we have a promposal for you,” Lemmie says as she and Mellie fold their hands together and place them on the bright red laminate, still-sticky-from-the-last-guest tabletop. The two of them burst into our bedroom this morning—after Dean and I had already showered and gotten dressed, thankfully—and begged for chocolate chip waffles and hash browns for breakfast, and I was all too happy to oblige.
Waffles didn’t sound half bad after the appetite I’d worked up before sunrise.
“You want to ask us to prom? Mis pollitas, I am flattered. Whatever will I wear?” Dean says, pressing one hand to his chest and fanning his face with theother. The twins look at each other and then to me with confusion.
“I think they mean proposal, baby. Isn’t that right, chickadees?” I say with a wink to Lem and Mel. I color in a flower on Ollie’s placemat with a pink crayon while Ollie goes crazy with a green one.
“Exactly, a promposal. Lemmie, tell them.”
“Thank you, Mellie. Uncle Lukey, Dean, we want to color the house,” Lemmie says with all the authority of a CEO commanding the boardroom.
“You want to color the house, huh? You’re gonna need a lot of crayons,” Dean chuckles.
“Not with crayons, Dean,” Mel rolls her eyes dramatically, and it makes my heart skip a beat. She looks so much like her mother when she does that. I don’t know if this grief stuff will ever get any easier, but I have finally gotten to a point where the reminders of my sister in her daughters brings a smile to my face instead of tears to my eyes.
“We want to paint the house. The outside walls are pretty but the inside walls are so boring. We want it to be like Cami’s house. Miss Kira and Mr. Warren let Cami paint her room rainbow colors, and all the other walls are colorful too.”
I see Dean smirking out of the corner of my eye, almost like he saw this request coming. Lem and Mel do spend a good chunk of time next door with Cami,and the inside of Kira’s house does resemble a Lisa Frank lunchbox. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the kids were requesting that our place look like a rainbow factory exploded, too.
“Painting a wall is a big job. Do you girls think you could handle it?” I ask, and the girls resemble a couple of bobbleheads with the way they nod in response.
“Of course we can handle it Uncle Lukey!”
“Yeah! Look at Dean’s nails. We’re so good at painting inside the lines!”
Dean holds up a hand, showing off his purple and orange manicure. He waggles his fingers at me, and the girls clasp their hands under their chins and throw the most irresistible puppy dog looks my way. I purse my lips and tap my chin with my index finger, mirroring the girls’ usual thinking faces and making it seem as though I’m thinking really hard about their promposal.
Of course, the answer was always going to be yes, but clearly Lem and Mel put some thought into the question if they waited until they could serve it to me Shark Tank style, so playing Mark Cuban and letting them sweat for a minute is the least I can do.
“Alright, I think we can paint. But I have some conditions. Listen up, Double Trouble.” I raise a brow at the girls, and they immediately drop their poutsand tug on their earlobes—a trick they learned from Miss Stephanie at preschool to “turn their listening ears on” that I very much appreciate.
“First, if we do this, I need you to try to keep your room clean. Pretty, colorful walls will be no good if there’s clothes and toys all over the floor all the time.”
“We can do that!” Lemmie says while Mellie nods enthusiastically, and I believe them. While the girls tend to tornado their way through the house, leaving toys and clothes and glitter in their wakes, we never have to tell them twice to get moving when clean-up time comes around.
“And painting is very messy. You’ll need to help me and Dean lay down towels to protect the furniture and the floor before we get started.”
“I love laying down towels!” Mellie squeals.
“Me too! We lay down towels before bath time every night to keep the floor dry, remember Uncle Lukey? We can keep our bedroom floor dry from painting the same way!” Lemmie says, and it takes everything in me to hold back the emotions bubbling in my chest. They’re so much like Gigi that sometimes, talking to them makes me feel like a kid again. They have their mother’s looks, her charm, her take-charge attitude and her ability to find the fun in any situation. Everything that made my sister the personI loved more than anyone in the world shines through her three daughters.
I look at Dean, and he gives me a wink and an almost imperceptible head nod.
“Alright, chickadees. I think you’ve got yourselves a deal,” I say. Dean and I both offer up hands for shaking, and Lemmie and Mellie can barely contain their excitement as we shake on our deal. Ollie jumps in on the fun too, loudly giggling and smashing her hands on the table, rattling her crayons.
After breakfast, we take the kids to a nearby hardware store where we pick up all the necessary supplies. Lem and Mel take their time going through the wall of eco-friendly, kid-friendly, and non-toxic paint options and carefully choosing colors for their room, as well as the kitchen and a few doors around the house.
When we get home, we get right to work. The girls change into matching pink painting overalls and Dean opens windows for fresh air while I help Lem and Mel move their bedroom furniture to the center of the room and lay down towels to protect the floor. Over breakfast, Dean let them scroll through an app on his phone for inspiration, and they decided on a swirly, sunset-like pattern. It’s a pain in the ass to get the painter’s tape just right, but when it’s all done, Ipour a bit of strawberry pink, lemon yellow and tangerine orange into three pans and let the kids loose. They’re working on the lower portions of the walls that are easy for them to reach, and later Dean and I will help them with the higher parts.
“They’re doing a pretty good job,” Dean says as we watch from the middle of the room, where we’re sitting on top of one of the dressers. Ollie is here too, playing with her sea lion stuffie and scooting her little diaper-butt around on the floor. Dean set up a makeshift baby jail cell using the bedroom furniture and a few strategically placed gates, so she has some freedom to play while still being safe and in our line of vision.
“Yeah, they’re not bad. If you ignore the puddle of paint they’re dripping on the floor because they don’t know how to get the excess off their rollers, they might have a future in the house painting business.”
“Or maybe they’ll be famous artists, like the guy who splatters paint all over the canvas and then sells them for millions of dollars. Then you can quit your job since the pollitas will be able to support us in our old age.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I say, holding out my iced Americano to cheers with his s’mores-birthday-cake-cannoli cold foam sugar concoction with the whisperof coffee at the bottom. Between his personality and the monstrous amount of sweets he consumes on a daily basis, I’m surprised that my husband isn’t a walking, talking cavity.
Then, he backhands me in the chest and I want to rescind all my previous statements about his supposed sweetness. I rub at the spot, glaring at him with my best “what the hell was that for?” look.