Laundry

The roaring in my ears is the world. From the second I wake up to when my head hits the pillow it deafens me. I’m not sure if it’s just the pile of laundry overflowing into the hall or my three year old jumping on my bed to wake me up on Saturday morning. When I told my mom I was pregnant she gave me this look. It wasn’t like she wasn’t happy. She was thrilled. But she had this expression for about a millisecond that made me wonder if I was ready. It passed so quickly that I forgot about it, and we went to pick out fabric for new curtains in the living room. New curtains. I never thought I’d become that mom. The one that worries about new curtains or frayed rugs or whether the house is tidy when company comes over. When I asked my husband if I was different he said no. I was exactly the same as when we met; except maybe more responsible and less restless. I didn’t want to tell him I still was. Then he asked if he could buy a new TV because everyone has flat screens now. I said no because I wanted to wall paper and decorate the living room first. And then I felt silly, like I was playing house, and apologized. He suggested maybe we take a trip somewhere because I seemed stressed. I said no and picked up my Danielle Steele novel to look occupied.

At eleven on Tuesday morning I took Max to his library program and sat with the other moms at the star bucks across the street. I listened to their whining conversations about their balding husbands who had names like Frank and David. On and on they went about their marriages, the colour of the walls in their multiple bathrooms and what some body’s mother-in-law had said to them at some family gathering. I occasionally interjected with the appropriate clauses. It looked more interesting to talk to the college student with the half pink hair behind the counter. We might even have something in common. She didn’t look like she type to read Danielle Steele novels, though. Neither was I really, I was just trying to fit in. Like high school. It was all the same really. They had designer jeans, I didn’t. Mine had holes in the knees from painting my neighbours deck to buy the new Guns & Roses album. I listened to it on the floor of my tiny attic bedroom on Bern Rd.

I asked Cal if we could move to the country while we were having a glass of wine one evening. He set his down the coaster (yes, I have coasters) and looked at me seriously.

“I just don’t like the women in this town,” I took a sip of my wine.

“That’s the only reason?” he laughed. I liked the way his eyes squinted.

I explained the balding Frank and David husbands, the in-laws and the ripped jeans. I asked him if he remembered the time we sat on the hill looking down over the Mills farm and told him I never ever in my life did I want to live in one of those developments with the houses made of red brick that all looked identical. He said he didn’t really. He only remembered how we made out and smoked.

I looked at him seriously. I want a farmhouse and a clothesline. I want to hang my laundry in the sunshine and watch max play with his toys in the grass while denim wearing overalls. I want him to ask me things like why we love, and how the clouds are staying in the sky, and why daddy holds my hand. I want to go on long walks through the farmer’s fields and have colourful rag rugs in the living room. Cal said he’d been kind of waiting for me to say something like that. He wants to build a tree fort and sleep in it with Max and get a puppy named Achilles, like the Greek warrior. I thought, finally, the roaring, wouldn’t be so deafening if there were an ocean of grass. And I was glad he was still hungry, for the same things I was.