It is a typical October Monday morning. I do not work on Mondays because that day is always hectic what with starting the school week and catching up on household chores from the weekend. This Monday at 6:55 AM I am sitting at the kitchen table fueling up with Cheerios and a low fat chocolate poptart for the day. Cabell, our 14 year old son, is milling about the kitchen preparing his breakfast cheese tortilla and my husband, Frank, is pouring a glass of juice.
“Mom,” Emma, the 16 year old, yells from the stairwell, “Have you seen my red shirt?”
I look up for a moment and contemplate the laundry that lays dirty on the laundry room floor, wet in the washer and tumbling in the dryer. “No,” I reply.
“Mom, it’s my red long-sleeved shirt. The one with the boat-neck. Are you sure you haven’t seen it?” Emma pushes the point as she scurries through the kitchen to check out the laundry room herself.
Although I can miraculously come up with lost clothing items on some occasions, this red shirt is just not jogging any of my memory cells. “I haven’t seen it,” I say and return to my poptart.
“Mom,” Emma whines as she reappears from the laundry room, “It’s picture day and I want to wear it.” Just when I fear we may be on the verge of tears about the missing shirt that is the only perfect shirt for picture day, Emma spots her pink laundry basket filled with clean and folded clothes sitting in the corner of the kitchen.
I had completely forgotten about this basket of clothes. Two days prior I had washed, dried and folded these clothes. As I looked at this basket still in the kitchen on Monday morning I became a little annoyed at Emma. I had asked her on Saturday to simply take this basket of clothes up to her room and put them away, but she had obviously not moved it anywhere.
While I steamed about it she merrily rifled through the clothes and located the one-and-only red shirt. Crises averted, she jounced back up the stairs to finish dressing. I had been nanoseconds away from the lecture, “Ah, there is your shirt in the basket of clothes I asked you to carry up to your room two days ago. See, if you had done what I asked after I had slaved over all of your laundry, then you wouldn’t have been frantically searching for that shirt this morning. After all I do for you, you could at least carry up a basket of clothes when I ask you to do it.” Thankfully I was distracted by the over-roasted cheese tortillas billowing out of the toaster oven and failed to deliver the martyred Mom tirade.
By 7:15 Frank and both children were out the door and I settled in to straightening the kitchen and pressing ahead with putting clothes into the washer and taking them out of the dryer. By 11:00 I had worked my way upstairs to change bed linens. As I tucked in clean sheets on Emma’s bed I spied the pink laundry basket sitting in the corner of her bedroom. “Oh,” I smiled to myself, “the sweetest pea did bring up that basket after all.” For exactly 30 seconds I was full of the happiness of a Mom nurtured, every wish granted. It took 30 seconds for me to joggle out of the recesses of my brain that I had, in fact, lugged that basket upstairs several hours earlier on one of my many trips upstairs transporting items out of the cluttered kitchen.
But, that 30 seconds has given me a glimpse of the fragile memory that may lie in my future. I can only hope that in my old age I will have that gentle, kindly memory loss that will allow me to do some task one hour and credit some dear sweet loved one with thinking of me and doing it for me without my ever having to ask. It guarantees a lovely life of harmony with my children. In my mind they will be the sweetest things, always thinking of me. Or if it’s me thinking of me that will be fine, too, because I won’t remember the difference.