(This is my last week of blogging for 2021. Friday is Christmas Eve, then I’ll see you on January 3rd).
My sons received a few simple house rules to abide by for Christmas break.
No cooking of pork products after 10 p.m.
Laundry loads should include more than one sock and a t-shirt.
Personal shit contained in bedrooms. No leakage into the living area.
Buy needed supplies as necessary, and cook and clean up when appropriate.
Unless friends are going to pay rent, I don’t want them standing in my kitchen every single night.
And most importantly, no waking Mom up in the middle of the night with noise and light.
A few nights ago, I was roused from sleep by boisterous laughter and light coming from under my door. My bedroom is like a sound-proof chamber, so something has to be pretty garish to wake me from a sound sleep.
From the bathroom there arose such a clatter, I sprang from bed to see what was the matter…
I stood outside the closed bathroom door, eavesdropping on two boys talking full volume and laughing, the sink and shower both going. I stood outside that bathroom, rubbing my hands together like the Grinch at the top of Mt. Krumpet.
“I got ‘em.”
Waking Mom up in the middle of the night is the deadliest no-no you can make if you hang out here. Even the boys’ friends know this sacred rule. Momma O wakes up at 5:00 a.m. to start her workday, so whatever you do,
don’t. wake. her. up.
It was 2:00 a.m., and I was pissed.
I stood outside that bathroom ready to blow a gasket, when suddenly, I froze. One boy was in the shower, and one was brushing his teeth, and they were sharing an annual family Christmas “inside joke.” As my older son built up the scenario, the youngest kept laughing harder and harder through his toothpaste.
Classic brother bonding. And like the intruder I was, I had almost interrupted it.
With the noise and light still pumping out into the hallway, I retreated back to my bedroom, unseen and unheard, and fell asleep smiling to their noise.