Three days had passed since I’d left messages for the mother of one of my daughters’ friends.
The girl was one of several middleschoolers who had spent the night carousing at our house, and who’d left bits and pieces behind. I’d managed to reunite the other girls with their swimsuits, towels and hairbrushes, not to mention the single shoe that someone belatedly found tucked into the sofa cushions.
But one mother still hadn’t called back. So I sent a text. She didn’t text back.
At first, I scarcely noticed. In some households, summertime may be when the living is easy, but at our place this year it’s absolutely mad.
With everyone over the age of 14 working odd and/or long hours and three younger children who need to be fed and read to, and delivered to and retrieved from various camps and swim practices and generally cared for, plus a dog that needs walking and feeding and lavatory breaks — not to mention the two exchange students who are coming next week for a month (memo to self: prep guest room!) — it has been pandemonium.
Oh, for long periods of time the house may be silent (except for the distant grumbles of a snoozing teenager), but it’s not the silence of summer languor. It is the white noise of chaos.
As the days wore on, I kept coming across the shoes and cardigan that needed returning to their owner. It was weird. The mother still hadn’t responded. Normally, she would have gotten back to me immediately. I knew the family was in town. I began to feel uneasy. I sent an email, in case her phone was out of commission.
No answer. Then I actually saw her car off in the distance on River Road. Now I was worried.
Had I offended her? Oh man, I must have offended her! I searched my guilty conscience.
It was true that due to irrational exuberance the night before, we’d all overslept on the morning she came to fetch her daughter. We’d promised to have the child ready to be picked up for church, and had been woken by the doorbell.
At the time, the mother hadn’t seemed angry, just in rather a hurry. But what if she’d been angry? What if she was right now telling all her friends about that unreliable, slovenly family of layabouts to which she’d made the mistake of entrusting her precious child?
Don’t be silly, I told myself. Remember what your friend Amy always says, I told myself. Remember that Amy always says: “Into silence we pour our anxieties.”
Well, I was pouring out a Methuselah of anxieties. It was now four days since I’d begun trying to reach the mother whom I had offended so grievously that she was willing to abandon a nice pair of flip-flops rather than deign to speak to me.
It was at that point that the phone rang. Guess who?
“I’m so sorry that I haven’t replied to your messages!” said the voice on the other end of the line. “You must think I’m terribly rude –”
“Oh no no no no,” I cried.
“It’s just,” she said, “this summer is so unbelievably busy I haven’t had a single moment. Everyone is everywhere and I’m constantly driving and it’s been utter madness!”
I could have laughed out loud with relief. In fact, I did laugh out loud with relief. I wasn’t in disgrace! And in the manic pace of summer 2012, I wasn’t alone, either.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
