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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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10:10 a.m. - 2003-06-26
A pretty scary thing happened this morning. I woke up late, around 6:30 and left my room to go to the can as usual. I stepped out into the hall and heard, "Good morning, Mom" float up from downstairs. Oh no! Wolf was up already! ACK! I did my business as quickly as I could and booked it downstairs to see what disasters were awaiting me. Lord knows how long Wolf had been up and the possibilities were horrific. Praying he hadn't clobbered himself somehow and I'd only have to deal with honey spread on the couch or all of the bills and tax stuff shredded and strewn, I checked Wolf over carefully. Whew! A couple new mosquito bites, but no concussion lumps or blood. He hadn't whacked off large chunks of his hair. He wasn't "decorated" with magic markers. A couple of his teeth were wiggly, but they have been for a month, so no dental injuries. All in all he seemed just fine. The TV was on and tuned to Nickelodeon. Wolf wasn�t watching �Evil Dead� or some other inappropriate video. Hmmmn... The mess in the morning room was the usual kid and husband clutter. Nothing seemed sticky. No gouges in the wood work. All the pictures on the wall were straight. No festoons of toilet paper or crunchy layers of corn flakes. No butcher knives. No puddles of juice. Huh? Okay, he hadn�t destroyed the morning room. The kitchen was probably where the mess was. But the fridge was closed. There weren�t any egg shells on the floor. The door to the back hall was shut tight meaning Wolf hadn�t decided to pee all over the clean clothes in the laundry room and hadn�t gone prospecting in the store room, randomly tearing open boxes of pasta and cake mix hoping to score some candy. So the kitchen checked out. Odd. Little bathroom? No gritty piles of Comet. No books swollen and dripping in the sink. The first aid kit was closed and where it should be and no tell-tale litter of wrappers from a band-aid rampage. The toilet was empty and flushed normally. No socks were stuck in the outflow pipe THIS morning. No little plastic boats bobbing around because Wolf had been playing toilet bowl armada. Oh-kaaay.... The dining room then. Nope. The only mess in there was mine. (The dining room table has become the repository for all the moving stuff, rolls of tape, bags of packing peanuts, newspapers, etc.) The secretary was closed and the paperwork was still neatly pigeonholed inside. The light fixture was unbroken, as was the glass in the china closet door. Weird, weird, weird. Back to the front of the house. Music room? No shards of CDs and shattered jewel cases. No flutter of pages ripped from books. The curtains were still attached to the window frames. All the kaleidoscopes were neatly on their stands on the mantel. Even the lid was down over the piano keys. Spooky. The library? Nothing out of place. The blue parlor? Same deal. The vestibule, the front hall, the stairwell all normal and unscathed. No way. I raced back into the morning room where Wolf was still watching TV and felt him again thinking I might have missed the burning fever or broken leg which had prevented Wolf from engaging in his usual antics. Nada. The kid was fine. 6 years. 6 years of tears and mess and wearily mopping up again and again and again. 6 years of rampages and disasters. 6 years of clenched stomach anxiety over my heedless son�s lack of self-awareness and the resultant split lips, goose eggs, bloody noses, torn toenails, cuts, bruises, and frantic phone calls to poison control. 6 years. Suddenly a bit faint and weak kneed I plopped into a chair and stared at my offspring. Tears of wonder and relief rolled down my cheeks. For the first time since his birth my boy had gotten up before me and HADN�T destroyed ANYTHING. He hadn�t damaged himself. Or set a cat on fire. Or any of the thousand other stunts he�s pulled. Stunts which have turned my hair grey and forced me to buy Tums in the giant economy size barrel. This morning might be a fluke. A stray coin of good behavior tossed into the lava filled roiling fountain which is my boy and his way of going on. But still, it gives me hope. We might just survive his childhood. We just might at that. ~LA
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