A broken marriage.
A new job.
She works as a Personal Assistant on the ForNoah Youtube channel.
Noah is on the autistic spectrum and she fixes things for him.
He's a shipwright and creates beautiful works of art.
She's a woman starting over who meet...
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The first day at a new school. A stern-faced elementary school teacher waits in the distance to take my kids to their class. Simi holds Ade's hand firmly. She has that stubborn look she gets when it's her way or the highway. A hard tilt to her mouth as she gets ready for the elementary public school battle. Most of the time Simi is a pretty good kid, focused and determined. The dark side of Simi is when she gets something in her head, like painting a solar system on the ceiling. She will get her way. At the old house, she had a complete galaxy painted on the ceiling of her bedroom. We did it together. On the day we painted it, she looked at me and gave me her thousand-watt smile. Her little half-smile acknowledges the obvious that I totally caved. That she was right. It was super cool Space Girl.
I smile at my daughter and touch the soft underside of her chin. "Want me to go to class with you?"
"No, Mom," she says to me.
Ade nods his head in agreement, tightening his hand on hers. I fix Ade's cape to make sure it's on properly, the instinct to fuss over them hard to resist. First grade and kindergarten better watch out. My tough kids are on the way.
"Okay, are you sure?" It would make me feel a hell of a lot better about this if I could. I don't say out loud.
She nods again and turns to meet the teacher, but I can't help the worry that pounds. Ade stops spinning around, cape flying and waves his lunchbox at me. I smile and wave back at him.
Starting over is supposed to be hard, right? If it wasn't hard, people would start over all the time. My kids are tough, but I'm just not as tough as they are.
My eyes stay on them until they're too far to see, and then I turn to head to my car. I parked my little Civic in front of the kindergarten playground and wait. The playground is neat. Fresh green lawn and a nice clean playground area. It's a quality school district. If I keep repeating this to myself, maybe I can stop worrying for once instead and watching like a creeper. I keep waiting for Little Man to see if he's alright.
My fingers work over the little notebook's keys and bring color-coded order. The lives of Zoey Jude, Noah Jude, Maurice Lora, and Sabali Lora available to my little admin business. I pull up a quick video of a creator interview of Zoey Jude.
"The ForNoah YouTube channel was an accident. I didn't realize that anyone would want to watch notes to Noah and from Noah. I had no idea the impact of my family. We were always like a family growing up. I guess it let the world understand what that meant and they love watching it."
The file gets dumped into the edit later bucket.
I take that interview to heart as I deal with making things work for the unexpected YouTube stars. I sent her a message filled with calendar events related to The Tour YouTube singing contest. And upcoming interviews and questions from the fans of the channel.
Tari: The CakeMe YouTube channel wants to collaborate.
Zoey: Right, right, the expansion? I wanted to set that up. I'll ask Noah, but feel free to ask him yourself in the future.
Noah talks? He hasn't said a word to me.
Zoey: He said yes.
Tari: OK
The kindergarten back door bursts open, and little short legs rush out the door with high-pitched screams. The playground fills with kids. My son races out happily, his cape blowing in the wind.
Get 'em, Little Man!
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