God Bless The Broken Road (Jonathan Toews)

Meet Sam

Maisie

March seems to be a lack luster month. I mean last month we celebrate love and next month we celebrate Jesus (and the playoffs, not as important, but pretty close) and this month we get St. Patrick's day where there's more of a chance having bruises from pinches than people actually knowing what the holiday means. It's a excuse to drink and a sad excuse at that. But I have to admit that the changing the river green thing they do here in Chicago is super cool and that gets me pretty excited.

Before the game today we decided to go watch the river turn green and I was a lot happier than I should have been.

"Mom calm down, it's not like we're meeting Gordie Howe" Jackson says and I send him a glare.

"Shush it or you're not going" I tease and he covers his mouth. I fix masons "kiss me I'm Irish" onesie and put some jean shorts on him. I slide on his nikes and give him a green hat before heading to the car. We drive over and take our heard of people to the bridge for some good seats. I snap a bunch of pictures because, well because it's what I do. Everly was sitting on top of Jonathan's shoulders as he pointed out to her what everything was. Those two were something special, that's for sure. Jackson had taken Mason under his wing and is helping raise him. He is adamant that he will play hockey, I try to explain that he might not want to play be he won't take no for a answer. He might not be my child but he has my stubbornness, that's for sure.

"So Jackson, how has school been" I ask as he sits on the bridge and I hold him tight.

"Really good. I'm doing fourth grade math" he says holding up four little fingers. I was actually pretty impressed by that one.

"Really? That's awesome little man. Anything else I should know" I ask. He taps his chin and looks up trying to come up with something.

"There's this boy in my class. People are mean to him but he's actually a really good guy. I tell my friends to leave him be but I think he just want friends for himself. Henry and I are good friends with him but he doesn't like to do much. I talk to him at recess and give him food if he doesn't have any. He's different, but I like different" he shrugs. I feel my heart break because that little boy sounds just like me. I didn't want anyone to go through that. Jackson goes to a public school because we wanted him to have as normal as a life as possible, but he's not a normal boy.

"This little boy, what's his name" I ask.

"Samuel" he says.

"Do you know who's Samuels parents are" I ask.

"No. They don't come to family day or parent teacher conferences. He usually just sits by himself" he explains.

"How about you invite Samuel over for a play date? You guys can play in the basement and you can teach him really cool tricks" I suggest.

"Okay" he cheers and takes off to stand by the river as it turns green. I walk over to Jon as he gazes upon the water.

"This is actually really cool" he admits. I figured he would enjoy it.

"I just did something and I'm not sure what's going to happen next" I admit. He slowly turns his head and raises a eyebrow.

"What did you do..." Jon trails off.

"Jackson was telling me about a boy in school who sounded a lot like me when I was his age. I told him to invite him over and if I find out there's something fishy going on here I don't know what I'm going to do to make sure he's going to be okay" I explain in one breath. I catch my breath and Jon just stares at me.

"See... this is why I married you" he says and now it was my turn looked surprised.

"Because I invite random little boys to our house" I laugh.