Summers

When we were kids, my mom worked for a small business owned by a couple that went to our church. American Leak Detection—they found leaks in swimming pools. In high school the couple gave me my first job, helping them with random grunt work a day or two a week for $5.15 an hour. Lois, the squat, curly-haired wife (the epitome of a grandma) would have m&ms and goldfish for me to snack on when I got there. I decimated them on the reg, but man, I did an excellent job of sorting the brochures in their supply closet. I'm sure I was a huge asset to them. 

But back before I was old enough to work, American Leak Detection gave my mom her first job after having kids. And in the summers, when she was off being their accountant three days a week, the three of us were left gloriously alone. Ah, summer days of sleeping in and mindlessly watching episode after episode of Bobby's World and Animaniacs, of laying on the couch reading the romance novels I swiped from my mom's library pile while my brothers ran around with roller skates on their hands in the basement. 

It came with a price—there was always an unreasonably long chore list that had to be done before Mom got home, or else. It was a constant disappointment to my mom that none of us cared about how the house looked. She cared SO much, and it made her so angry when we left things a mess—and yet somehow she never figured out how to change our behavior. We knew she'd be upset, we knew she'd get mad, yet our rooms were still a mess and we still left things all over the house.

The worst was when someone was coming over. Then there'd be a harried flurry of activity, of yelling about discarded socks and dishes in the sink, and then the red hot anger of her silent treatment, the glares keeping the three of us darting ahead of the vacuum cleaner, trying to stay one room ahead of her to escape her fury. Even now as a 34 year old the sound of a vacuum cleaner makes me anxious, like I have to jump up and clean something. Meanwhile, my 31 year old brother says he feels like he's having a panic attack every time he turns on the shop vac in his own garage. 

So we knew this chore list was important, but it was summer! Laziness compelled us, and the sweet, sweet joy of being able to do whatever we wanted with no one to tell us no. 

Our approach was this: do whatever the fuck we wanted until 30 minutes before Mom was supposed to get home. Then we'd erupt in a flurry of activity, picking items off the list, racing through the house throwing toys in drawers, tossing dishes haphazardly in the dishwasher, doing just enough vacuuming to get a few lines in the carpet so it looked done. In all of our history together, these were probably the moments when my brothers and I worked best together, when we were a team—a team fending off the furies of our mother. We might have been fighting all morning, but once it was go time, we had to pull our shit together. We all knew what had to be done, and it had to be done fast.