The pile appeared on Monday on his bedroom floor, just beside his dresser. Normally, such a sight would make me crazy: how many times must I say it? “Put your clean clothes away; put the dirty ones in the laundry.” What means this pile of clothing, languishing here, purposeless?
But I could see that something was meant by it. Here was not the idle casting off of clothing before the boy climbed into bed– not that this would be inexcusable this week. It would, in fact, be excusable: he has had Quite A Week. Play practice into the tens every night after a full day of school, looming academic deadlines and tests and quizzes besides. Not to mention the soccer game on Sunday.
He climbed into the car ashen-faced on Monday and read me the list of All He Had To Do. It was enough to make me a more than a little nervous, to be honest. I did not envy him the weeks ahead, and felt Genuine Concern for this young man who is closing in on the end of his junior year of high school. So much to do.
Pray about it, I told him, and then just do the next thing.
What more is there?
So the pile of clothes was excusable. And don’t I, even, in the midst of a busy week, allow once-worn clothes to lie across the blanket chest or slide onto the floor? Don’t I pile laundry baskets with clean clothes and then leave them that way, prying articles I want from between others in the stack?
Yes, I think I do.
Still, the pile languished. Tuesday, Wednesday. On Thursday I gathered them up.
All whites. All t-shirts. Here, the shirt he got from last year’s basketball camp. Here, the one he got as a freshman, promoting a special event at his high school. This one is from a 30-hour famine he participated in, and the other from the a capella group he sings in.
None of these shirts fits him now.
Oh.
This used to be my job. My long and tedious job, done twice a year: cleaning out the children’s dressers and closets, putting away the warm-weather (or cold) things and taking out the cold-weather (or warm) ones. Along with that seasonal sorting, I was also sizing them in my mind, mentally holding them up against the body to whom that drawer belonged. Would this fit him anymore? Had she outgrown it?
The process ended with three piles: clothes for the drawers and closets, ready for the season ahead; clothes for the bin, saved for fall or spring; and clothes for the give-away, things the child had outgrown and wouldn’t be needing anymore.
It was a job I hated, to be honest. Tedious and long and also, always, a little bit sad.
And now, witness the pile on the bedroom floor, where my son, my sixteen-year-old son, my very-nearly-a-senior-in-high-school son, has done (part of) the job himself.
Which is as it should be, even if he didn’t get to finish it, even if he didn’t get to tell me what was up with the pile, because his week has been so busy he has hardly been at home.
I am going to have to get used to that.
I am all too aware of this, early griever that I am. I know how long a year is: short. I have tracked the days in their mysterious diminishment. They grow shorter and shorter, the days and the weeks. My son’s time left at home, if all goes as planned, is not very long at all.
The pile of shirts at the foot of his dresser was eloquent.
And the play was excellent. It opened last night and, truly, the audience was delighted. We gave them a standing ovation, in fact. The acting was so strong, the sword-fighting (yes!) believable and impressive, the wit delightful. Will plays Will Scarlet, brother to Robin Hood, and the joy that characterizes him (honestly, it does) was apparent from the moment he stepped on the stage (which was the play’s first moment) until his death (horribly) at the hands of the evil villain.
Most of the students on the stage last night were my students once. They all did a stellar job. But when I stood to my feet to join in that ovation, I will admit that I was standing for my son.
He has worked so hard this week. I’m not going to hold a little pile of clothes against him.
