Dirty laundry

Having children is such a rich experience. You watch them grow, mature, become their own people. You give them roots; you give them wings. That is your endeavour. You do your best in the daily muddle, hoping they are learning the skills and wisdom to find their way in life. You look at the World, and your maternal heart clenches a little. Are you preparing them for it adequately? And then, the occasional glorious moment comes when they demonstrate that, yes, they can handle what comes their way. They are more than up to the task. Watch out, World.

This was one such moment.

I was having a round-up of the kids’ clothes – as you do. In 10-yo’s side of the bedroom he shares with 7-yo, there was something of a heap, which I gathered up. I opened the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers, to put some of the heap away. The drawer was full, not of folded clothes in a neat stack, but of a jumble of clothes, much like the one I was holding, scrunched up, and jammed down. I took out the jumble, to find that it was a pile of dirty, not clean, clothes, including several items of smelly underwear.

I looked over at 10-yo, lying on his bed, rapt in his book, oblivious to the laundry concerns of his mother.

“10-yo, these clothes in your chest of drawers. I think they’re dirty. I think they should have gone into the laundry basket.”

With his grinning face alight with an expression that said “I know you’re going to think this is funny and not be cross with me”, he replied,

“Last time I put a whole pile of clothes in the laundry basket at the same time, you got mad at me.”

“So you’re hiding dirty clothes in your clean clothes drawer, and you’re going to sneak them into the laundry basket little by little?”

With a beatific smile,

“Yes! Exactly!”

[Now, just to set the record straight here. He’s referring to the times when I send the kids down to the basement to tidy up. The basements here tend to become the kids’ areas. I don’t know how other people manage their basements, but I hardly go down to ours. I let the kids do what they like down there, and then from time to time, I call a tidy-up day, and I make them put the basement back to rights. By that stage it has become a fearsome task, but as I point out to my little Herculeses, they are lucky I don’t make them tidy up every night. On these occasions, out from the basement emerges a whole pile of sweaters and assorted clothes. And if I don’t intercept quickly enough, that whole pile of sweaters, which are perfectly clean - worn once, discarded in the heat of an air hockey match, and left on the basement floor - are dumped into the laundry basket, with a clean dressing gown or two for good measure, and perhaps a clean blanket. And yes, when that happens, I have been known to have a small rant the next day about washing a big load of sweaters which weren’t dirty when they reached the laundry basket, but having had a damp towel crammed on top of them overnight, now do need washing after all.]

He knows me so well. He knows that I do, indeed, think it is funny to store your dirty underwear and sneak it out bit by bit into the laundry, like the British prisoners of war digging a tunnel, and dropping the loose earth out onto the compound, handful by handful, through holes in their trouser pockets, evading the notice of the German guards. He is right: I’m not going to be cross. He knows I am amused by the intention behind the deed, and am not, when all is said and done, terribly worried about smelly small boy underwear. He knows he got away with it, when the conversation ends in a laugh, not a lecture about cleanliness. As I leave the bedroom, he probably allows himself another grin, before returning to the world of Fablehaven.

He’s a couple of steps ahead of me already. He beats me at chess easily, and even laughs sometimes when I move a piece, saying “Really, Mum? Seriously?” before mercilessly denying me the opportunity to change my mind, and switching that piece with one of his own, removing it off the board. He's just proved his ability to dodge a maternal laundry rant. He can handle a mother. Oh yes, he’s a couple of steps ahead.

But he’s not ahead of me in everything. He doesn’t know how I’ve stored away this conversation. How I, too, am grinning as I go downstairs. How I laugh inside myself at the World, and know that he will make his way through it very well. Yes, in some things he’s a couple of steps ahead of me. I came across the dirty laundry pile today, and a few weeks ago I found a secret stash of Twizzlers. What other secrets lie hidden throughout the house? What other things make him grin in secret triumph as he goes to bed with his Fablehaven friends? But aha, for the mother’s secrets that meanwhile are making me grin in secret triumph too!

.