Behind closed doors
I noticed a dab of shaving cream drying on our bathroom ceiling. I smiled when I saw it, thinking of how it got there.
Every year for Christmas, Santa leaves a can of shaving cream in my daughter’s stocking. This year he left two. And they were extra big cans.
I figured Celeste would do just like she has in the past–carry them straight to the tub, fill it with shaving cream, then jump in. But this year, she decided it would be more fun to share, so she saved the cans until her friends could come over.
Last Sunday, she called two of her best friends, Jordan and Olivia, and invited them to bring their swimsuits and come over. I made sure their parents knew what we had planned. They thought I was nuts to encourage something that potentially messy, but gave their ok.
The shaving cream flowed for well over an hour last Sunday night. From the safe side of the door, we could hear screaming and giggles and the wet, thwacking sound that fistfuls of lather make as they splat on the wall.
There were a few times when I braved opening the door long enough to snap a few pictures, but I didn’t stay long. I was actually kind of tempted to join them, but there wasn’t really room for one more. Besides, there was something nice about just listening from the other side of the door.
That night at bedtime, Celeste hugged me especially hard and thanked me for being such a cool mom.
“If I ever have kids, I’m gonna’ be just like you.”
When I was little, growing up on 21st Street in Nitro (the street that leads to Ridenour Lake), we had a long back yard that sloped just a bit in the middle. When hard rains would come, the area at the bottom of the slope would fill up with water. If you took a run and hit that water just right, you’d shoot right on through it. Hit it a little bit wrong and you were rolling in mud.
I don’t remember Mom ever discouraging us from attempting to slide. Sure, it was messy, but it was nothing the water hose and some Tide couldn’t erase. She believed there was nothing wrong with getting dirty. Her own mother had said, “You’d have to swallow a bushel of mud before it’d kill you.”
Swallow. Wallow. Just one letter different. All I know is it was one of the best parts of being a kid. I imagine I was probably dripping in mud when I first decided that when I was a parent, I was going to follow her lead.
Not long ago, my friend Terry was telling me about this well-planned road trip she went on last summer with her husband and sons. She’d carefully planned each stop along the way, but it just so happened they were traveling through Albuquerque at the same time as the town’s annual Muck in the Mud Derby. Testosterone trumped Terry’s itinerary, and before long, her boys and their dad were flopping in slop like the proverbial pigs, having the time of their lives. The event included an obstacle course that ended in a big pit of wet clay-sandy mud, the kind that made sucking sounds as they lifted their feet.
Both boys saved globs of mud from that day, souvenirs from their favorite day ever.
“It’s just plain old mud,” Terry said. But I understood.
It’s why I couldn’t wipe that drying dab of shaving cream from my bathroom ceiling.
