Delores placed her hands on her hips and fought down a scream. An entire roll of toilet paper filled the bathroom, draping over the two toddlers. She’d wanted children for the whole of her life and as the decades had passed, she’d resigned herself to not having any. Then she’d met Thomas and all her dreams had come true.
A few months after the wedding, she’d found out she was pregnant. It had overjoyed them until the ultrasound came back with twins. Twins! Then fear had set in. Fear that she couldn’t handle it. Fear that she didn’t have enough energy to take care of one child, let alone two at once. But Thomas had been so encouraging and really, what choice did they have? They were going to have twins. Better to prepare than dwell on the unknown.
But how does one prepare for two mischievous miscreants? The trouble these two got into hourly was enough to make her pull her hair out. She didn’t know what they were thinking half the time, but they seemed to know each other’s mind with just one look. She was getting better at recognizing what that look meant, but she’d missed it this time.
The two toddlers grinned at her and tossed the sheets of downy paper in the air. Their giggles filled the small room. Giggles that a few short years ago had been a forgotten dream. She dropped her hands and knelt on the floor. She was learning to choose her battles with these two. One roll of toilet paper wasn’t worth the cost of silencing those precious giggles.
She reached across the linoleum and tickled the closest of the twins. Her squeal of laughter filled the tinny room, and her brother crawled over to them to protect her, and Delores switched her tickle attack to include him. His laughter joined his sister’s filling the room to bursting.
Twins might have been twice the trouble. But they filled her heart to bursting and she wouldn’t have changed one moment of their lives, not for all the rolls of toilet paper in the world.
