You should really put on a coat.

We met when your only job was shuttling your children back and forth to their various activities, and now I know you loved that more than most things. You’d drive for hundreds of miles just to get the chance to drive them another few hundred miles.

You are a warrior father. You will go to battle for them but not for me. I am the one you defend them against. You keep me away to keep them protected, and it hurts me, it hurts me, and not a single cook in the kitchen has a clue, or would care enough to change if they knew.

They don’t know you wrap me up in you most nights before we go to sleep. They don’t know you’re always willing to deal with the self checkout for me, or how you’ll cut meat off the bone for me because I hate it, or that just the thought of hugging you makes me smile. They don’t know the way we have fun and can laugh together, the way we hold hands on the couch while we watch movies, how we dance around the small kitchen cooking.

They’ve never seen us at a restaurant sharing appetizers and beers and smiles and the small talk of daily life. “What do you want to do for dinner Friday?”, “Can this go in the wash?”, “You should really put on a coat”, see? Those are all ways of saying I love you without using the words.

Why don’t they know you love me?

After all this time, why won’t you let them know you love me?