True Riches: The Joys of Having a Kryptonian Child
by Alita James
"Martha can you please keep Clark out of the barn?" Jonathan admonished his wife gently as he walked into the cheerfully lit kitchen.
Martha placed the newly dried mug on the stand and moved to greet her handsome husband as he entered the room. A slight frown appeared on her face, "Has he been eating nails again?" She worried for their son's digestive system, although nothing that he had done as yet had harmed him. Their son was quite unusual. Son, she repeated to herself. He had been with them for over three months and it still thrilled her when she used the word. Casting a thorough and searching glance over their son as he sat beaming up at the two adults as if he could indeed understand what was being said about him, sat the child in question. Large hazel eyes set in a cherubic face, topped with a riot of rich brown almost black curls. His ill-fitting clothes made it even more difficult to accurately gauge his age.
Jonathan put down the battered metal bucket on the kitchen table. Some of it's contents dropped onto the much warn counter top that had, over it's many decades of service had had much more disgusting material dropped on it. The acorn sized hunks of material sparkled dazzlingly, throwing out beams of multicolored light to all corners of the cozy kitchen.
Jonathan worriedly ran a hand through his sandy colored short hair and said, "I managed to hide these under some tarp before Ethan noticed them." he peered into the bucket trying to estimate it's contents, "I think I got all of them."
Drawn to the offerings, Martha held up a stone and watched as it caught the light and reflected the vibrant colors of the rainbow onto the faded wallpaper covered walls of the kitchen. "I just love how pretty they make the room look." A warm smile playing on her lips as she admired the colors thrown out by the raw diamond.
"Beautiful." Jonathan said as he admired his wife. The thick tresses of her auburn hair caught up easily by a pair of simple pins revealed the elegant line of her neck, her beautiful body only slightly disguised by the cotton shirt and the well warn jeans. He had been lucky that she had even noticed him in college amongst all of those city boys from good families and him there just getting by on a basic football scholarship. They had been in love and reckless but he had no regrets. Their only recent regret so spectacularly resolved with the advent of the disturbingly silent but boundlessly affectionate addition to their family, currently sitting on the threadbare woven rug in the kitchen of the house that his grandfather had single handedly built to woo his grandmother and prove to his mother-in-law what a worthy husband he would be. "Beautiful." He repeated and smiled into Martha's liquid brown gaze.
"Boo-ti-ful." came Clark's awkward voice.
Martha and Jonathan turned to their son instantly.
"What Clark? What did you say sweetheart?" Martha asked as she fell to the floor beside him.
"Bootiful." Clark pronounced as he smiled into Martha's face.
"Our baby is talking!" Martha shrieked to Jonathan and swept Clark into her arms and planted kisses all over his face making him giggle. "Beautiful in deed." So filled with joy that she was half crying and half laughing. Her son was talking. Her beautiful precious son was talking. Her prayer had been answered. She relished the feel of her husband's strong and comforting arms around her.
"He's talking." Jonathan said as he joined his wife in her sweeping dance, their son clutched to her chest. Jonathan knew that moment's like this was why he was going to love being a father. He joined his family in their laughing babble of three voices. The bucket of raw diamonds forgotten on the warn surface of the hand-made oak table that sat in an ordinary farmhouse in Kansas that rung out with laughter and love.