"Mommy? Mom? MOM?" Dean screamed as loud as his lungs would let him. He was sat on the living room floor surrounded by his toys but his favourite toy, a model car his Dad, John had given him, was missing.
"MOOOOOOOOOOOMMYYYYYYYYYYY?" Dean whined. Somewhere upstairs of their family home, Dean heard movement. Dean cocked his head to one side and listened as his Mom, Mary slowly made her way downstairs.
"Why are you screaming the house down for, sugar?" Mary enquired with a soft voice. She was wearing paint splattered denim dungarees that made a funny crunchy noise as she crouched down next to her four year son.
"Daddy's car is gone." Dean said as he threw a model airplane into the pile of toys to his right. Mary shook her head and stroked Dean's sandy coloured hair away from his face.
"Sugar, remember we put it in a safe place? So we wouldn't lose it?" She said softly. She stopped herself from laughing as a look of deep concentration spread across her young son's face. His brow was furrowed and he bit his bottom lip as he tried remembering where the safe place was. Mary waited patiently as Dean slowly went through every room in the house in his mind.
"Is it in my room?" Dean asked, slightly unsure of himself.
"Come on; let's take a look, shall we?" Mary stood up and waited a moment as the feeling came back to her legs. Dean jumped immediately and ran up the stairs, calling to Mary to hurry up.
Mary smiled when she heard Dean shout "I found it!" from his bedroom. She heard him run out of his room and into the corridor. By the time she made her to the top of the stairs, Dean had wondered into the spare bedroom.
Dean stood in the middle of the dust sheet covered room and stared in amazement at the open paint cans positioned just under the window. He was imagining what he could do with all that paint when Mary entered the room.
"Don't even think about it little man." She warned him gently. She quickly walked around Dean and replaced the paint can lids. Dean tried to hide his disappointment.
"What you doing in here Mommy?"
"I'm redecorating sugar. Wanna help?" Mary passed Dean a small paint brush, which Dean clutched in his right hand excitedly.
"What's re-dec-cor-rat-ing mean?" Dean slowly sounded out the strange word and he looked up to Mary with wide eyes.
"It means we get to play with a little bit of paint. But only a little bit and the paint stays in this room, you understand? No going and painting anything else in this house." Dean looked around the room at the bare walls. Three out of the four walls were a dirty, brown colour. The other wall was a sky blue colour.
Mary carefully poured a little of the blue paint into a small tray and placed it by one of the green walls. She motioned to Dean to come over to her, which he did. Holding his hand with the brush clutched in it, she dipped the tip of the brush into the paint and then passed the tip of the brush over a patch of the wall. After a couple of goes, Dean seemed to have the hang of it so Mary went back to her wall and carried on where she had left off.
The pair of them worked silently except for the sound of the brushes slopping the new paint onto the walls.
"Why are you making this room yellow Mommy?" Dean asked. Mary put her brush down and turned towards him. He looked adorable as he carefully painted the wall with his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth.
"I prefer blue to this nasty brown." Mary replied.
"Can we paint my room please?" Dean had stopped painting and looked up at Mary, his green eyes wide with pleading.
"No, Dean. It's already blue, that's your favourite colour, right?"
"Oh, please? I can paint over the angel thingy!" Dean stated eagerly, to which Mary frowned. The 'angel thingy' Dean was referring to was a picture of an angel hanging in Dean's room. Mary had bought it in a garage sale just after Dean was born.
"No sugar. That's your angel, he's watching over you, keeping you safe." Mary told Dean every night as she put him to bed that angels were watching over him. She truly believed that.
Dean turned back towards the wall he was painting and shrugged.
"I don't need no angel thingy watching me. I have you, Mommy. You're my angel." Mary walked over to Dean and placed a kiss on the top of his head. She smiled down at her son as he carried on with his painting.
She couldn't even begin to describe how proud she was of her son. Whether Dean felt he needed them or not, Mary thanked the angels for her and her family's blessings. She felt like she was the luckiest Mom around.