Sometimes my mom walks in and sets me straight, but the toilet has to explode first.
It was a Thursday in a rough week, in the dog days of summer, in a house with four boys. My firstborn son rounded the corner juggling an apple with one hand and said cooly, “the toilet’s overflowing.”
My hair stood on end. I sprinted to the scene, dredged all the dirty towels out of the hamper to soak up the water, and fetched the plunger. It’s an emergency that happens every time I let those boys eat a cheese pizza.
Firstborn shrugged and strolled outside to rappel off the garage.
As I started disinfecting the bathroom, something in me snapped.
I looked around at the mounds of laundry and the piles of dishes. My vision went fuzzy around the edges. And I realized: I will die trying to catch up with my chores.
It’ll be my swan song. The local headline, if the newspaper knows what’s good for it: “Riverton Woman Buried Alive In Minecraft Socks.”
I sat down on my bleachy bathroom floor and hugged my knees.
That was when my mom walked in wearing one of her fancy halter top things, carrying a box of black licorice (my favorite) and a sequined purse with a conceal-carry pocket for her pistol — and called out “yoo-hoooo! Grandma’s here!”
Ever prideful, my first instinct was to stand up straight and pretend like everything was OK. I’m the tough reporter. I’m the grunge daughter in combat boots. I don’t need any sweets or sequins or life guidance.
But part of being tough and edgy is being honest with yourself. And I honestly needed my mom.
So when she asked how I was doing, I told her the truth.
“I’m dying and it smells like a butt,” I sniffled. “I’ll never catch up. I c-c-can’t think here anymore.”
My mom hugged me. “Awww honey,” said she.
I softened, thinking I was about to bask in a wave of sympathy.
“But you know, it’s because you don’t make these boys get off their thumbs and help!” Mom chirped.
What. That wasn’t the sympathy I expected! I am a FINE taskmaster, I thought.
“Well, I make them put away dishes and sometimes they take out the garbage –“ I protested.
Mom frowned. “Don’t you remember the chore list?”
Atrophied channels of my memory burst open. I had forgotten the chore list, though it was my rhythm for years. It listed four chores: Kitchen, Bathrooms, Floors, and Pets/Garbage duty.
And my parents had four children. Well, five, including the baby. My mom would have made the baby wash dishes, if the baby could have stood on a stool. But she just sat in her little jumper seat, the slacker.
If you were on kitchen duty for the week, you had to wash dishes daily and clean the whole kitchen by Sunday night. At age 10, I rode the bus home from school, loaded the dishwasher and fired it up.
“Woah, you know how to USE that thing?” asked one of our five feral neighbor boys.
I grimaced. “You DON’T?”
He didn’t. He ran his mother ragged. I wonder if she ever snapped?
If you were on bathroom duty, you had to clean the bathrooms by Sunday night. Don’t laugh, but bathroom duty was my favorite. It was a one-and-done: clean two tiny bathrooms and the rest of the week is yours. Even now, I think of a good bathroom cleaning like the New Year’s Eve of the week.
If you were on floors duty, you had to clean all the floors by Sunday night. And if you were on pets and garbage duty, you ran the household garbage out all week and cleaned the litterbox by Sunday night.
“Do you remember ever being grumpy about having to do chores?” asked Mom.
I dug in my memories.
No, I wasn’t grumpy about doing chores, except for that one time I refused to mow the lawn, so my mom sat on me.
Why was I so good about helping my mom?
“Because you didn’t get to do ANYTHING until you finished your chores,” said Mom. “You didn’t go to bed Sunday until they were done.”
I remembered. So we did chores, all four of us, while cooing at our drooling baby. And every Sunday night, we sighed, cuddled down in our perfectly clean house, and ate popcorn for dinner.
Looking back, I wouldn’t trade that feeling of triumph and camaraderie. We had battled our own grunginess and won. We had freed our humble but sweet home from the dregs of ourselves.
Back to Thursday.
My mom walked out of my house in a flurry of glitter pastels.
I sat down and built a chore list.
Firstborn walked in, munching an apple. "Watcha doin'?" he asked.
I smiled.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
