"Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death." –Pearl S. Buck
Idealistic
Happiness- the kind that fills you up and never leaves- had always eluded him.
When he was five it had leaked out of him slowly as lips that had smiled and kissed and encouraged him had become dry and cracked from the chemo. Soft hands that had soothed him when he was sad or sick and corrected him when he wrote his "S"s backward or if he forgot how to treat girls became rough and papery and so frail he thought he might break her with a touch. Eyes that had glinted and teased about what she'd hidden in the meatloaf dulled; and after they'd closed for the last time he would listen to the radio for hours just to hear her sing her songs to him over and over again.
It had been beaten out of him in the years that followed her death. Little boys with no mother will be rowdy and their dad drowned his pain in his booze before taking it out on their hides. Some days they were completely ignored and other days they were the focus of all of the rage Dad kept in check at the barber shop. He never thought it would hurt so much when his dad gave up on them, but it had and he was pretty sure he would've killed himself if Pops hadn't taken them in.
The army had taken him and transformed him from boy to man. Teamwork replaced independence and it felt good to be fighting for something. He learned well how to operate within a team and later how to lead one. By the time he got out, though, he was no longer a wide-eyed, optimistic kid, but rather a scarred and soul-weary veteran whose feet would be a daily reminder of the high price freedom came at.
When he was a kid growing up with Pops and Granny, he had dreamed about the great family he would have when he got old enough to fall in love and get married. Instead, he found himself at 33, a reformed gambler, single father with no rights to show for it, and despite making Special Agent quickly, a job that was far from extraordinary.
What happened next was the stuff of legends and fairytales. Boy meets girl, girl blackmails him into letting her into his world, they fight, they find success, they fall in love despite themselves. Five years and a lifetimes' worth of adventures later, he pursues her only to find that she'd been pursuing him too, just in her own way, waiting for a "good reason." She accepts his reasons and offers her love in return.
Happiness is still something that comes and goes through his life. Marriage has all of the thorns that any other bed of roses does and he grudgingly concludes that they will never see eye to eye on certain things. They laugh and cry; fight and make love. She helps him raise his son and gives him a little daughter with her eyes and his charm smile. And in the end he discovers that he doesn't need happiness after all because what he has- what they have uncovered together- is Joy.