Dad & Mom were sitting in the family room in the quiet
of the evening after the kids were in bed.
Mom was writing a quick email to her cousin on a laptop. Dad was answering emails on his phone. Dad said, “You should be getting to bed, its
getting late!” Mom replied with a sigh, “Yes, I’m later than I’d planned on!
I’ll just finish this up and then I’ll head to bed.”
Mom signed off the email, pressed send, checked 4 messages
that had just come in – deleted two, flagged one and replied to one with a two
sentence answer. She got up off the
couch, picked up two books from the floor and put them back on the bookshelf, put
away the chess game that the kids had finished earlier, folded up a blanket and put 4 pieces into
the ongoing puzzle on the coffee table.
She picked up the newspapers and scattered fliers as well as a pair of
shoes and carried them all to the mudroom – shoes onto the shoe shelf and
papers into the recycling bin. This
reminded her that tomorrow was garbage day – has to be out on the curb by 8
a.m. – so she made a quick run through the house emptying bins and brought the
bags, as well as the kitchen compost bucket, to the back door for the morning.
She went to the kitchen and set out the lunch bags for the
next day, putting in the non-perishable items and rinsing out a thermos and
three water bottles that had been missed earlier. She noticed that the dishwasher hadn’t been
run yet, so filled it with soap and turned it on. She started to get the coffee maker ready for
the morning but discovered someone had used the last of the ground coffee so
quickly ground some more. While she was
doing this, she was thinking about the next day and realized she needed to take
meat out of the freezer to thaw so she could put it in the crock pot in the
morning, so that meant another quick trip to the garage to the freezer. As she put the meat into the kitchen sink she
noticed the table hadn’t been set for breakfast – “Whose job was that anyway?
I’ll have to check the schedule on the fridge and remind the tribe in the
morning about the inconvenience to others when one shirks one’s
responsibility!” – so she put out dishes and cutlery. She put some wet clothes in the dryer, put
another load in the washing machine, quickly ironed two shirts that would be
needed in the morning and sewed on a loose button.
As she headed upstairs to the bathroom she went past the
phone desk and wrote a note to call Grandma first thing in the morning to find
out the exact time she needed to be picked up so to get to her medical appointment on time. Then Mom signed two
school forms that had been left by the phone – not that anyone had remembered
to tell about them, though! - and counted out some change for school popcorn
orders that were due the next day. She signed a birthday card for her
father-in-law, addressed the envelope and then rummaged in the dreaded
‘everything drawer’ for a stamp. She
made a quick “To Do” list for the morning and started a grocery list.
She picked up the miscellaneous items that had been left on
the bottom three steps and carried them upstairs, stopping here and there to
put them all away. Finally making it to the bathroom, she changed, washed her
face, put on moisturizer, brushed and flossed her teeth and combed out her
hair.
When Dad heard the toilet flush, he called up the stairs, “I
thought you were going to bed?”
“Almost there!” Mom replied!
She made a quick trip back downstairs with one last bit of
rubbish she had missed earlier and a basket of laundry. She made sure the cat was out of the mudroom,
put some water in the dog’s bowl in the garage and checked all the doors were
locked. Then she looked in on each of
the kids, hung up a wet towel, scooped some Lego out of the way in the
boys’ room, turned out a bedside lamp and put away the book off a pillow, hung
up a shirt, threw some dirty laundry into the hamper, and told the oldest one
to get to bed and finish the math in the morning!
In her room, she set out her clothes for tomorrow and set an
alarm. She made a note of two more
things that needed to be added to the “To Do” list in the morning. She read a chapter in her Bible, said her
prayers and climbed into bed.
It was about then that Dad put down his phone.
“I’m going to bed,” he announced, even though no one was there
to hear!
And he did.
