I Cared About My Kid.
On this New Year’s Eve, these are the kinds of things I’m pondering.
During the pandemic, we bought new tiles and carpet for the whole house. We’d learned along the way that Dylan is allergic to the chemicals found in new carpet so we got wall-to-wall wool carpeting. Wool carpet is untreated and all natural – so Dylan can breathe in his own house.
After the carpet was installed, Dylan said, “There’s a hole in the new carpet.”
“What happened?”
“Dirt spilled out of my plant and I was cleaning it up and now there’s a hole in the carpet.”
That’s how we learned that you can’t rub wool carpeting like you do with Berber. Rubbing causes a hole.
We placed the plant over the hole and bought some Woolite. I’d always wondered what Woolite did. I thought it was laundry detergent. Now I know.
A year went by and Shane said, “How do you clean up spills on the new carpet?”
I looked at him, trying hard not to explode. “What did you spill?”
“Just a little bit of coffee.” Sigh. Grape juice might be worse, but not much else.
So I told Shane how to clean up the spill. I didn’t even follow him upstairs to make sure he did it right. After all, these are the things we should expect with adult children. Just because they’re not toddlers anymore doesn’t mean they won’t spill things.
I think often about when the kids were little, and the house was still new. I think about Shane driving his battery-powered motorcycle on the hardwood floors and Bill yelling, “He’s going to ruin the hardwood floors!”
I didn’t care about the hardwood floors. I cared about my kid having fun.
But Bill cared about the floors and he didn’t ask for much. So even though he loved riding it around our house, little Shane didn’t ride that motorcycle anymore. It broke my heart to put it in the cold, crowded garage where he ignored it.
Our hardwood floors are trashed now anyway.
In the mornings, my tiny boys would come into my room and wake me up by jumping on the bed. They loved this game. Bill was worried about the mattress but I said, “They’re only going to be young once. Let them jump on the bed!”
So they jumped. The mattress is still fine.
I have a mirror by my bed, and I was afraid they’d knock that mirror off the wall and onto my head. It’s a huge, heavy decorative thing and it would have broken bones if it had landed on someone. But I let them jump anyway.
One day I noticed a dozen tiny handprints on the mirror. The boys were getting bigger and those handprints were only going to get bigger, but I couldn’t imagine washing those handprints off of that mirror. I adored them.
After years of my not cleaning, Bill got frustrated with the mess. So we hired cleaners to come and do a deep clean. Afterward, those tiny handprints were gone from my mirror. By then, the kids had stopped jumping so my mirror stayed clean.
I hate the clean mirror.
So when Dylan tore the wool carpet and Shane spilled coffee on it, I thought: It’s just carpet.
The toddler motorcycle is gone. The handprints are gone. Soon the kids will be gone forever, too. And if the carpet is torn or stained, so be it.
At least I’ll know they were once there – that youth and joy once ran rampant in my home. That’s how it should be.