Hi. Trying something new. Writing from Henry's POV. Multi chap if you are interested. Just click follow story when you review. All emotions to be explored. Pre, during and post series. Not just H/E. maybe a cliffhanger or two but mostly one shots. I still write from my phone as I am learning google.

All characters belong to Madam Secretary. My imagination just plays with them for fun and to keep the fandom alive.

Please review. Makes my day to read them.

Xox Bren

PS I aged Allison by one year for this entry to fit the story. So she's 4 and not 3.

Fathers Day 2002

I am so blessed. I am sitting in my office in our home. My family is cleaning up after dinner and I have been given an hour to just " relax and write honey." It sounds like my wife has her hands full but she will yell for me if it's crucial and I know she wants to give me this gift.

I love my wife with all my heart. I am a religious scholar - a total nerd. I teach Religious studies, Ethics and Philosophy at the University of Virginia and she is an analyst with the CIA. That's the cover story anyhow. I hate that she's also an operative when needed. I worry. She's the reason I am a happy functional human- and it's been a long time since I have lived life without her. I am so proud of her and the kids we have. Through this past crazy year - she and I have had a son and the world went crazy on September 11th. America is reeling and I suspect we have changed forever.

My Elizabeth is one of the people tasked with finding those responsible. The people who funded the bombers, the outliers.

She feels as if she is responsible for it all sometimes. Like she and her team should have been able to prevent it. The guilt eats her alive sometimes, and it's been hard to calm her down occasionally. She's pretty tough, and our family life has helped. We had our son last summer and his little soul has given us something good. She had to stay sane to feed him and mother him - and the two girls we have are far too young to really get it. Our eldest is almost seven and our other daughter is four. Three laughing innocent children and that's why my wife gets up and goes to work and still has time to make our family life work. When she can't smile for them she goes for a run, or she cleans something with the music on loud. My children know the words to Baby I love your way and Under the Bridge. I love that. OK it's Stevie who knows the words. But Allie and Jase perk up to the eclectic music in our house. The Beatles, James Taylor, Frampton, the Chili Peppers, eighties music, easy listening of days gone by and even opera. I play guitar and my wife plays piano. It's rare that she touches it, but it belonged to her parents and we keep it with us. Apparently her mother played well. Elizabeth says one day she'll get out her old music books and take lessons. She wants Stevie to start, but Stevie would rather play guitar like me. There is some pushback between Stephanie and her mother. It can hurt Elizabeth's feelings but she remembers having similar issues with her mother- so she does her best not to get upset. I am known as the Stevie Whisperer.

In our house it's cozy, it feels like a home. We have artwork on the fridge, a dog, laundry piled to the ceiling and smudges on the windows. We have a little garden out back and a hose, wading pool and sandbox. There are trikes and little bikes. We even invested in one of those giant strollers and a little tikes wagon. When we aren't at work we aim to be one hundred percent with one another.

I won't lie. We argue and cry and fail at this goal of ours sometimes. For a couple of hours here and there someone will be off on a walk or holed up in one of the rooms journalling, reading or taking on a new project. Elizabeth can do car repairs and garden. I can put in tile and flooring. We both paint and drywall.

Every day some part of our family gets upset - three kids under 10 and we have noise. Yelling and shoving and smashing and spilling happens. We talk it out, give a lot of hugs, distract and clean it up.

There is always laundry. There are 21 meals to make each week and as capable and amazing as my gorgeous wife is- cooking dinner is not her thing. She tries and we eat it but we all know it's best if I cook dinner and she does the dishes. It's been like that since we met. I remember going to her little apartment for dinner and she was so embarrassed that she had ruined the meal. We ordered Chinese and played scrabble and she confessed to me that processed food and the microwave were she survived.

One of these days I am going to give her either a chef or cooking classes or both.

Right now she's a great bottle washer as that old saying goes.

Today was a nice normal family day and I treasured it. Stevie is in first grade and she had made me a painted rock, a homemade card and she sang me a little song they all learned. I never knew how amazing it was to get these little public school gifts until they started coming home and I tear up. Stevie's eyes were full of love and she hugged me and said I was her favourite daddy. This is after I took away her bubblegum stash from Halloween because she was sticking it under the coffee table in the family room. Elizabeth was sure I was getting coal today but I seem to be forgiven.

Our Noodle is quieter. Less self assured but quite a little artist. She had an apron she made with her preschool teacher and it says Chef dad on it. Allison is a dark haired dark eyed middle child. Moody on a bad day- but very thoughtful and sweet. She said she made the apron for Mother's Day but she put chef dad on it because I am the chef. Apparently this apron was supposed to go to mom. Allie told her teacher that she had to make a different present for mommy - and last month her mother got the hand painted picture frame. Apparently my preschooler can keep a secret.

When she told us this morning Elizabeth and I were both tearful. Personalities are formed young and we are in awe of these kids of ours.

Jason apparently chose this new shirt I am wearing. Elizabeth did her whole "hand to God" routine and I let her get away with it. I know she took him shopping last week and they came home with it. It's dark green plaid with short sleeves and it's cool and comfortable for summer. It brings out the green in my eyes and as I put it on this morning my wife was trying to tell me this is why our 11 month old chose it. She's adorable when she makes things up. She cannot lie around us. I shudder to think how this works in the field but her work family has assured me that my wife has this side to her I never see. She's apparently quite good at interrogations and at holding back information unless she deems it necessary to share.

George told me she's calculating and cold when she needs to be. That makes me shiver, but it's Isabelle and Juliet who have told me that Bess often feels sick after having done her job and that she's able to compartmentalize like a champ. Their boss Conrad has said that she is valuable because she's so versatile. He saw that in her right away. She was young, in her senior year at school- orphaned and with no ties. Whip smart and very capable at math and languages. Very mature, but also teachable and ethical - more service minded and respectful and honourable at eighteen than some of his forty year veteran colleagues.

This information comes out over the years. We have picnics and barbecues because they need to do normal things to counter the secretive nature of what they really do.

Her team does mostly classified work but we can share that they work together and have families and what they "officially do."

Occasionally "Bess" will come home with my wife. She doesn't stay long. I never call her that because she says it helps to have a few different names to help her be the three people she needs to be. Lizzie is for her family - which is now just her brother and some cousins. Bess is for work, apparently they gave her the name her first week. With me she's Elizabeth.

I can't argue with that. As a marine I was Hank and had a whole lot of habits I don't have as a married husband and father. I like Henry best but Hank does live somewhere in my soul. I am a flawed human and I have my own demons. I joined the ROTC to have a path to college. I ended up fighting in the gulf war and dropping ordinance over the Middle East. Flying to serve my country. I left my wife home for the first few years of our marriage. She did the analysis stuff and I was flying over the desert. It was brutal. We both had to fight to keep things going and we were both hurt mentally and physically by our involvement with our jobs. We started over in 1994 with the birth of our daughter Stephanie; and we decided that we had to move forwards and build the life we wanted - because the demons were ready to claim us if we allowed it. We pledged to be together - no matter what came for us. To never cheat - but rather to talk no matter how awkward it got. To argue and grow rather than let things fester. I imagine that we have decades ahead of us and judging by how far we have come since 1986- who knows where we will be in ten years or in twenty. I imagine we'll always be in service. Perhaps I will be chair or department head. I do a little consulting for the intelligence community. Being a religious expert means I know of, and about extremism. Elizabeth is worried about me getting hurt. She doesn't say a lot about it - because she knows how I feel when she leaves with a suitcase and comes home with sand in her clothes and sometimes marks on her body and nightmares. I have learned to just be thrilled she is home. Thankfully when she is pregnant they won't send her anywhere dangerous and she's on board with that.

She loves being a wife and a mom and she loves her career. Considering how much she has to juggle and how young she was when she lost her parents and ended up at boarding school - well it's a testament to her spirit how well she's handled all of this.

.Cooking aside - and a penchant for tossing her clothing around when she's stressed - Elizabeth is just an amazing person. She can come home muttering in Arabic and then just light up when the kids want to cuddle. She told me if she ever changes she wants me to hold her accountable. She knows we will do something obnoxious to our kids, simply because we are humans; but to be absent from them and be in the room, to completely let them down- she was earnest when she sat on the bed pregnant and exhausted with Jason; and she swore that she'd rather be beaten than to do that to our kids.

She misses her parents,keenly and she measures herself as someone who has no experience with teenagers. She reads journals and books about tweens and teens. She asks my mom for advice- only when my sister Maureen is not around. Her co workers cannot help her. Conrad has a son same age as Stevie. Isabelle is divorced and never had children. George is estranged from his 24 year old son, Andrew is newly married with twin daughters and Juliet is engaged to Aiden but no kids yet. They say Bess is who they will look to for advice and she laughs sharply. I know she feels like she raised herself and cared for Will. Aunt Joan provided the basics but there was not a lot of cuddling or conversations. I know that hurt Elizabeth. Joan died last fall and it was already hard for my wife who was a new mom, dealing with 9/11 and the memory of her parents accident in November of 1983.

Anyhow I wanted to tell you about the gift my wife gave me. The cover gift is this beautiful ancient research paper she found on Thomas Aquinas - written by one of his students in the 1800's. It's the kind of book I geek out over - whereas a lot of other guys want the latest Stephen King novel or a set of golf clubs. I play golf - but not enough to need the latest clubs.

Surprisingly she whispered to me that tonight we are putting the kids for bed early and she's going to give me a bath. She bought lingerie but won't tell me what.

I hear things have quieted down in the kitchen and it's been an hour. It's only 630 pm so we need to tire these kids out and put them down.

It was a perfect June day and I even managed to have a civil conversation with my father. We'll head to Pittsburgh to visit my folks for the July 4th weekend. My dad - sigh. That's an entry for another time. Hell that's a whole book.

Signing off for now.

Henry