It happens– easily– once a week, and this despite the fact that I do laundry Almost Daily. I just don’t do white loads daily, and herein lies the problem. This morning was, apparently, the foreordained day for the weekly occurrence: Will standing somewhere on the first floor of the house, barefooted, announcing to me that He Doesn’t Have Any Clean Socks.
Those are the days when I feel like a Bad Mother.
*****
They’ve started a band in the playroom: Bill, Will, and Everett. Every night this week before bed, the three of them descend the stairs and take up their instruments, and in no time their music drifts back up to me: “Collide,” by Howie Day and “You Remind Me,” by Nickelback. Everett bangs away on the drums and the other two play their guitars and they are Not Bad and also Improving All The Time.
Bill loves it and can’t believe this is happening already. Will is having a blast. But for Everett, these nightly jam sessions have come as a kind of innoculation against anything weighty or sad: he can’t wait to practice the drums, and goes to and from this task with an effervescent energy that is positively radiant.
And for me, sitting upstairs of an evening grading papers and hearing their music float my way, well, I think it doesn’t get better than this.
*****
The weather was glorious today. The early morning fog gave way to sunshine, and we didn’t need our coats when we left the school building this afternoon. After an early dinner, Emma Grace excused herself from the table to join some neighborhood children out doors, and before long her blond head was visible among theirs as she leapt and clambered with her friends along the edges of the creek.
She was still outside when I cleared the table, and still outside when, upstairs, I got ready to go for a walk.
The doorbell rang; Will answered it; no one was there. But on the top step lay her gift to me: a thick bouquet of blooming weeds, forget-me-nots, and some tender wild onions she had pulled from the lawn.
