I couldn't stand to hear you cry, son. I had just come back from Europe fighting the great war and you were still just a little baby. A beautiful baby with blonde hair and blue eyes as if the sun had given birth to you. I swear your mother is the closest thing to human sunshine, so it could only make sense that you were. I didn't appreciate that at the time.
Before I go any further John-Boy, I love you. I have always loved you. Those Goddamned women in France loved their babies, too. I could hear them babies crying as we rammed through cities and towns, destroying everything we possibly could with every possible man-made death machine we could possibly get our hands on. Everytime you cried, I thought of those babies who cried out at our violence. I never meant to make those babies cry, son. I just...
Heavy sobs started to break out and I couldn't write anymore. There was no way in hell I could tell John-Boy the hell I would forever feel from that great war without falling to pieces myself. I can't even write them down. Ever since Harold came and went and John-Boy's questions made all memories from that war, good and bad, flood back to me. I have just now realized how much I never quite recovered since then.
"John," Oliva calls out to me. I quickly try to calm down. I hate having her see me like this. "What's the matter? It's the middle of the night and here you are at the family table, crying."
"It's the war, Livvie," I say, the tears are not stopping. "It's the Goddamned war."
"Oooh," Livvie's voice was becoming agitated. "I wish that man never showed up here."
"I ain't crying over him, Liv," I say, handing the piece of paper over to her. "John-Boy had been asking me questions. I couldn't answer him, so I thought if I wrote them down...but I can't do that, neither."
It was Livvie's turn for tears to well up in her eyes. She never really knew, either. She could tell I was hesitant to get too close to I would say the first four babies. Like I said, I loved all my children and still do. It wasn't until Erin that I finally felt at ease with having emotional attachment to babies again. I pull Olivia into a hug, I can't stand to see my wife cry after all these years.
"My eyes, Liv," I whisper in her ear.
"What about them?" She asks, pulling away from me. She stopped her crying.
"When I came home from the war, you said the light from my eyes were gone."
"You got it back," she says, tussling my hair back away from my face.
"John-Boy's never lost the light in his eyes."
"I know."
"I never want to look into his eyes and not see it there anymore."
That was when Olivia got her second look at what I was writing and tore it up. I watched her in awe of her audacity.
"What'd you do that for? That was my paper."
"Listen to me, John Walton," she says, throwing the crumpled pieces into the trash and then coming back to me. She took my face in her hands as she started to speak. "John-Boy nor any of the other children need to know what really happened in your past. In the present moment, you are their father. A strong, loving father who would never give up on them. Being strong in the present moment matters more than a broken man in the past."
She was right of course. I was always a man who could give credit where it was due. I smile at my wife and she smiles back. She kisses me and I kiss her back. We hold each other tight and we don't let go for a while. We break with one arm still around each other as we head up the stairs. We go past the children's rooms and I pray to God they are all still asleep.
"Goodnight, Daddy," I hear John-Boy say as we pass his room. Damnit, that kid was listening to everything we had said.
"Goodnight, John-Boy, go to bed now. Everything's all right."
"I know it is," he tells me as I sound a sigh of relief. "Goodnight, Daddy."