“I just need you.”

My attention was split between my laptop and a late night cable showing of Ghostbusters 2 when I heard the squeak of the door. At first I thought it was the cats, because they like to play around the bathroom door, but a few short seconds later I could see the figure of Violet stumbling toward me in the dimness.
“What’s the matter, baby?”
She said nothing, with her bleary not-really-awake eyes and a good size frown on her face. She just kept walking towards me.
“What do you need? What’s wrong?”
“I just need you.”
She piled herself on my lap, curling up and burying her face in my neck. She said she hadn’t had any nightmares, she was feeling okay, nothing was wrong.
“I just need you.”
My work was calling to me (I can’t ever seem to get caught up) but the weight of this child on my lap was calling me more. My mind drifted to beautiful spring days seven years ago, when a newborn baby girl and I would snuggle up on the couch. She would lay on my legs and we would play and watch TV. Sometimes she would fall asleep and I would read a book with the weight of the sleeping baby on my legs, warm and soft and perfect.
That was my paradise, in days when everything was happy and wonderful. The random and necessary course of life took a lot of that paradise away from me, but I got a little bit of it back tonight.