Good Enough Housekeeping

I panicked the other day when I noticed there was a missed call from my son. For the past month, he has gone underground, always sounding annoyed when I finally attempt to break the silence and call. I had taken to texting an occasional "hi sweetie," and have contented myself with the occasional and equally uninspiring one word response. "Hi." Sometimes you just have to aim low.

A missed call, dammit. I leave my phone in the car for ten minutes while I run into the grocery store -- two unlikely events at once! -- and come out to see he has reentered the universe -- my universe, at any rate -- and attempted to reach me and, oh, bad mommy hell here I come again, I wasn't there for him. I immediately tried to call him back, to no avail.

So I called his older sister. She, too, had missed a call from him. Now we were both concerned. Only some dire circumstance could have compelled him to call each of us on a random Saturday afternoon. As we worried together about what may have gone wrong, he beeped in. "Gotta go, he's calling," I snapped at the child who keeps in touch, who would never think of disappearing and always wants to know what's going on. Isn't that always the way?

As it turns out, he was just doing a bit of "housekeeping," which, along with cleaning his room, included calling both his sisters and his mom. Housekeeping! I wonder where we were on the list, whether we ranked higher than cleaning the toilet.

The truth is it doesn't really matter. It was good to hear his voice. September can be a weird month, half summer, half fall, the days shortening and cooling to help us adjust to the pressures that accompany the change of season. Some of us need more help than others.

Come to think of it, I did a bit of housekeeping this week too. Overcame a bit of inertia, tossed out some garbage, made some space. By October I might actually be ready to hunker down and accept summer's abrupt departure.

Maybe I'll even call my mom.