Timeless // T.H

21// Slipping Through My Fingers

"Mummy, can I have the bucket?" Roo asked as they lay on the grass, staring up at the clouds and watching the planes taking off.

"The bucket?" she frowned for a minute, confused, "You mean our list?" he rolled onto his front and nodded excitedly. She laughed and pulled her phone out, and opening up the cop of their list that she kept in her phone, they started making the list on Roo's 3rd birthday when he said he wanted to roll down hills everywhere in the world. Their list was full of weird and wonderful wishes and requests that Ruben had wanted to do or see: like No.1- roll down a hill in 30 different countries, for example, or No.6- paint every door in their house a different colour. Some were easier than others of course, some like the first one, were going to be progressive goals, but they'd already tackled hills in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, so they had made a good start. Some, like No.10 (to eat twelve ice pops in one day) they had already completed, others were more aspirational glances into the future (like No.24- for Mummy not to cry on Roo's first day of school).

She wanted to teach Roo to have goals, and to understand that working towards them was more relieving than taking the easy route to temporary comforts. She had watched almost all of her friends' lives fall to pieces when things began to get difficult (Tom and Harrison not included obviously) or when things weren't handed to them anymore. She watched her own ideas about what her life could be spiral into nothing because she'd gotten lost in life, because she'd had dreams but no goals. She'd gotten into a fairly unhealthy relationship and fallen pregnant because she'd had nothing in her mind to work for other than Kieran; she watched Kieran fall into drugs and addictions because he'd never figured out what he could do past his foreseeable future. As that foreseeable future decreased in length, his dependency on his addictions only got worse and if she could provide her son with any valuable skills, they would be to know how to figure out what he wanted out of life and how to work to achieve it.

"What do you want to add today?" she asked, grinning at hearing him propose adding something for the first time. Usually he'd ask for something and she'd propose putting it on the list. This was the first time he had willingly initiated it.

"I want a bigger family." He stated very seriously; she stared at him for a moment in shock.

"You want another dog?" she frowned, sitting up and petting the animal that had squished himself into the thin gap between them after she and Roo had lied down to stare up at the sky. "I have to tell you mate, they don't all act like Nana you know?" she wrote the request down despite her sceptical approach to what he wanted, did they have enough time or energy for another dog? They had the space, sure but...

"Not a dog." Roo interrupted her thoughts

"Oh," she deflated a little, realising how overly attached to Tom he was now as well. "Oh baby listen," she sighed, pulling him into her lap and brushing his long hair from his face

"You should have a boyfriend like Sebby does. He's old but Chris loves him and he loves Chris and kids should have two parents and..."

"Roo you know why you don't have two parents," she tilted her head to look at him better. She knew what it was like to not have two parents around because her dad left her Mum when she was ten, and the last thing she'd wanted was for Roo to grow up without a paternal figure in his life- but that wasn't how life had worked out for her.

"I know Daddy died," he sighed. He didn't know how to say it to her, he didn't know the words to explain that it wasn't that he wanted a Dad, he wasn't trying to ask for a Dad, he just wanted her to smile all the time the way she did the night Tom came to Thursday Chips on the River with them.

"Who knows pal, maybe one day we will be lucky enough to find someone who is as great for us as Chris is for Sebastian, but it's not Tom." Ruben hadn't needed to name Tom for Betty to understand what he had been getting at, "He's not going to be around for much longer, he has a job that keeps him busy all around the world; it wouldn't be fair to anyone to tie him here. He's just a kid too, a bigger kid than you, but still a kid and he needs to be free to experience the world for now."