Dinner and dishes were over.
I grabbed the kitchen trash on impulse (yeah Richard likes to do it but it was getting a bit heavy–see the “did you know you broke your back?” post: there was a reason it’s been giving him grief) and I headed out with it.
The young family just down the street were out with their little boys on their trikes and waved hi. The little boys pedaled over to me in great enthusiasm and once they got all the way to me realized I looked taller from here and words failed them. They looked shyly up.
They were adorable. The younger one ditched his wheels after a moment and he still wobbles a bit when he walks, but still, where did the babyhoods go?
The mom complimented me on my bright pleated maxi skirt and I laughed: I don’t usually play dress-up to take out the trash, I told her, but I dropped a gallon of milk and drenched everything and just thought, hey, that one matches my shirt, sure, why not?
I looked at the older boy’s helmet. Hey! It matches my shirt too! as I held my turquoise arm out to his turquoise head. He was very proud of his helmet.
I told his mom of the time one of my kids flipped her bike at 13, broke her helmet, and rolled with enough force still to break her shoulder and how the grandmotherly neighbor down the street we hadn’t yet met ran to her and got her phone number out of her as she lay in the street and called me. I jumped into the car, came around the corner, and–oh! Right there!
That neighbor became a great friend to my daughter ever after.
Part of me was wondering as we chatted, how on earth did I get old enough to be the grandmotherly one now?
Meantime, that milk had beaded up on my shoes and it looked like it could be rinsed away and I’m hoping that that was enough to save my felted-wool Birkenstocks with the leather buckle. I love those and they don’t make them anymore.
Good thing we still, how I don’t know, have a good cobbler in this overpriced town should it come to that–not that I need him for this, just, it’s good to know that if I had to he’s there.
Because after cleaning the fridge over two days, I had had to clean the inside of the fridge, the outside of the fridge, the shoes, the floor, and mopped the floor again for good measure and thrown my blue skirt in the wash, when I… dropped the spinach paneer across the floor.
And cleaned that up.
There was still enough food for dinner.
But that is why I grabbed that trash and hauled it out of there: I was going to clean something and by golly this time it was going to STAY clean. Because I’m the mom. And I said so.
The bag graciously did not break.