Sally opened the door of her apartment and, before she could put her keys on the little table nearby, Percy ran into her. "You're back!"
She brought him in her arms and kissed his cheek, that was coloured by markers. "Have you been good to Cassidy?"
While the child nodded happily, the babysitter walked toward her with a forced smile. "He's been good. He only should be listening a little more."
"Percy…" She rebuked, trying to make her more serious face. The boy glared down to his coloured hands. "Promise you'll listen to Cassidy next time? You know, she's doing a big favour to mum picking you up from kindergarten."
"Okay." He answered, sadly.
"Now thank Cassidy and go to the bathroom, mum's coming!"
On Percy's face the warm smile quickly came back. He looked at the girl, thanked her and ran towards the bathroom.
Sally paid the babysitter and, while she was closing the front door, she ward the little bath-stool scraping against the floor. "Is my pirate ready?"
In the bathroom, she found her son standing on the bath-stool, ready to wash his hands. "I am!"
It took her fifteen minutes to wash his hands and face properly: Percy kept on saying his hands were dirty even if there was no sign of marker.
In the exact moment she sat on the sofa, Sally felt the weight of the day falling on her shoulders.
When she had brought Percy to the kindergarten, the teacher tale her about the barbarian behaviour her son was having against his classmates and the object "he used as weapons against monster he only sees".
At work, things didn't go better: as hard as she tried to be polite and smiling with the clients, some of them seemed to be born to annoy her and her boss, that morning, had tried to put his hands on her body. Luckily, a client had come into the shop and her boss closed himself in his office for half of the morning. The other half of the morning he shouted and scolded her and her colleague.
"I missed you so much!" Percy's voice made her forget about the angry voice of her boss. She held him tight and kissed his face many times.
"I missed you too, little frog." Se said as she started to tickle him and Percy bursted into laughter.
"Help!" He laughed as he tried to protect himself from his mother's hands. "Somebody help me!"
"Who? Mister Crab?" Sally took his favourite toy and used it for tickling him harder. "I eat you!"
"No! Mister Crab cannot eat me!" Percy managed to take the soft toy and handle it against his mother, laughing.
"Help, it wants to eat me!"
Percy stopped and looked at her intensely, like he was pondering. "No, mum, Mister Crab cannot eat you, what I'll do then?"
Sally's sight got blurred because of tears coming into her eyes.
Percy was the best thing she ver had.
Every day she thanked Poseidon for giving her such a beautiful reason to live.
Every day, at work, she told herself she was doing it for her child and this gave her the strength to get at the end of the day.
She held him tighter and kissed his hair. "I love you so much, Percy."
"I love you more."
"And I love you most." Sally whispered caressing his dark hair gently. Then she stated singing with low voice.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away."