“Time to take a shower,” I instruct Cabell at 8:15 on Sunday evening. He has been playing ball all this June day; baseball, tennis, soccer, then baseball again right after supper. I turn on the shower water and send him to his room to get undressed.
“I’m going to hurry in and out of the shower. Face, pee pee, bottom,” he claims. “Then I can watch you all clean out Little Ann’s cage.”
Ordinarily I would be devoted to enforcing a thorough shower for my seven year old and would offer complete assistance to him, but tonight I am distracted by Emma and Little Ann. Emma selected this tricolor Abysinnian Guinea pig from the pet store on Saturday. Ever since we have been seeing to its comforts and needs. Emma just finished reading “Where the Red Fern Grows” in her fourth grade class and named her Guinea pig Little Ann after the small dog who dies from a broken heart after Old Dan is killed. Our Little Ann should have nothing but a grateful heart having been plucked from the pet store crowd by kind-hearted Emma. Tonight we are cleaning out Little Ann’s hutch for the first time.
As we sit on the floor and unhitch the cage top Cabell comes to the door of Emma’s bedroom and, buck-naked, announces that he is off to the shower.
“Don’t forget your towel,” I say to him.
“What towel?” he asks.
“Your bath towel,” I reply. “If it’s not in the bathroom, then see if it’s hanging on your closet door.”
He disappears and Emma and I return to the cage cleaning. We empty the left over food from Little Ann’s dish and scoop out 1/8 cup of fresh food pellets. Emma checks the water bottle and removes old hay from the cage corner.
Cabell returns to the bedroom door still dry and naked. “I can’t find the towel, Mom,” he reports.
“Just get a new one out of the linen closet,” I answer, shooing him away with my hand.
I turn back to Emma and Little Ann. We are ready for the main job, scooping up droppings and soiled pine shavings. Emma uses her scooper to lift the bad stuff and throw it in the waste basket that I am holding next to the hutch. We’re new at this and we are concentrating hard when Cabell arrives at my side. I glance at him surprised to see him back so soon, but he is in clean pajamas and his hair is damp.
“Did you find a towel?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says watching Emma scoop.
“Did you brush your teeth?” I press, disbelieving that he can do all this in less than the total amount of time he spent searching for the towel before his shower.
“Yea,” he replies, “I brushed ‘em.”
“Are you ready for bed?” I ask
“Of, course,” he says and, satisfied with each other, we both turn back to the clean-up at hand.
Emma adds new pine shavings, replaces the hay and rehangs the water bottle on the side of the cage. She gives Little Ann a kiss despite my better advice against exposure to rodent bacteria and hops into bed. I spend the next fifteen minutes kissing Emma and Cabell, scratching their backs, tucking in covers and answering obscure questions about physics and anatomy that only seem to arise at bedtime.
Finally, I return to my bathroom and the scene of Cabell’s record breaking speed-shower. I am relieved to find that he did, in fact, turn the water off by himself when he finished. Then I spot the towel. It is a hand towel that is soaking wet and hanging from the washcloth rod just beside the dry wash cloth. I had told him to get a towel and he did as I said, although he was obviously uncertain of the purpose. I admire his willingness to follow instruction from those he trusts even if it doesn’t make much sense to him. I guess he dried off on the mad dash from the bath mat to his bedroom.