In the waiting room at Our House bereavement center, you can tell which of the little girls has lost a mother. Her pants and shirts don't quite match, and her tousled hair could use a brush.
And you can spot the dad adjusting to life without Mom by the casual way he pulls a diaper from his pocket and deftly fastens it on a wriggling toddler.
I'm not allowed to interview families waiting for the children's grief group to begin. But I don't have to. I know the drill. I was a newly widowed mother once, when my now nearly grown daughters were 8, 5 and 3.
On Thursday, the group's art project was construction-paper ties, Father's Day tributes to missing fathers: "I wish you were still here to take me fishing. I hope you're having fun in heaven."
Or, for men like Lee Tsoumpelis -- now mother and father to his four kids -- something more like this:
"You make the best grilled cheese. Thanks for being a good dad."
I heard about Lee from the folks at Our House. His children -- Maxx, 13; Isabella, 10; Logan, 9; and Zane, 8 -- have been attending groups since their mother's sudden death two years ago.
"Without those people outreaching to me," Lee said, "I don't know what we would have done."
Lee and his ex-wife, Debi, had been divorced for years; they shared custody of the kids.
"She was an awesome mom," he told me. "Sometimes we still can't believe she's not here." When she died, Lee gave up his bachelor digs and moved back into their rented house on a quiet Venice street.
I had an easy time finding the Tsoumpelis home. It was the one with the front door propped open, the half-finished landscape project, the crowd of kids huddled in the bed of Lee's pickup, studying a captured lizard.
I could smell dinner when I walked inside: hamburgers on the grill, a saucepan of curried rice ("frozen, Trader Joe's. You can't beat it," Lee said), grilled cheese sandwiches on the stove, and a vat of Tater Tots in a deep fryer on top of the washing machine.
To a mother of girls, the testosterone was dizzying. Sneakers and skates were piled in corners. Lizards and a tortoise were in dining room aquariums. The garage held a punching bag and workout equipment.
The only sign of Isabella I could see was a collection of ceramic angels on a bedroom dresser -- part of her mother's legacy.
