One cold and snowy evening while my Mom worked late, my older sister decided to whip up a batch of pancakes. She grossly overestimated what we could eat because there was a GIANT bowl filled with batter in a disgustingly messy kitchen in a disgustingly messy house when Mom’s headlights flashed through the window.
We reacted as we always reacted in a state of emergency.
“MOMS HOOOOMMMMEEE!!!!!!” Bodies went flying and screaming in every direction, hands waving around in the air. Complete chaos. My sister pulled it together and delegated orders:
“YOU Throw the dishes in the sink.”
“YOU book bags In. Rooms. NOW! And then pick up that mess downstairs.”
We knew we didn’t have much time and as my sister panicked with the mess in the kitchen she turned to me with the giant bowl of pancake batter and a look of horror on her face, “Kathy!! Take this bowl!!”
“What am I going to do with THIS!?!” I squealed.
“Feed it to Buddy!!!”
I grabbed the bowl and darted into one of the bedrooms that had access to the deck where our dog was kept. I wrapped a comforter over my shoulders because it was freezing outside. I pulled the blinds half way up and opened the sliding glass door. I was bent under the blinds gently encouraging our dog, “Come on Buddy, eat it up!!” while glancing through the opposite windows to see if Mom had come in when my sister came barreling through the bedroom door.
“What are you DOING!?!” She was frantic. She rarely got in trouble and she wasn’t going to have her reputation tarnished at the hands of a slow feeder.
“I’m feeding it to Buddy!!!”
“Faster!!!” and at that she came charging forward and pushed me from behind. Fear will do funny things to a person I suppose.
I fell into the snow.
“It’ FREEZING out here!” I shivered, but I saw that Mom had come in and I took my punishment and stood out there in my bare feet while Buddy finished his pancake snack. (I realize now that I could have just set the bowl down instead of holding it for our dog to eat at his leisure…I never was the brightest of the bunch.)
Turns out we did a pretty good job because Mom was perfectly happy when I came in to greet her.
“Hey sunshine! Where have YOU been!?”
Oh. Just feeding Buddy…and dodging another bullet…and suffering from a minor case of hypothermia.
Amazing the things we did to help each other stay out of trouble. That’s love right there folks. Pure and true.
And nothing will give me the warm and fuzzy feelings I’m sure to get when my kids join forces and plot against me. Nothing.