The phone rang. In a panic, my friend called to tell me her son had just swallowed dish washing liquid and asked if I could pick up her older daughter from gymnastics. After deciphering her frantic words, I agreed and told her not to worry.
She rushed to the doctor with her son. He administered some medicine to eliminate the soap from frothing in his stomach. As gross as it sounds, he was actually fine after the whole thing was over. When my friend came to pick her daughter up later that evening, she suggested that my daughter, Sophia, come over the next day to reciprocate.
The next morning I intended to drop her off and run a few errands with my still ailing son. My friend would have nothing of it. Being the happy-go-lucky Bavarian that she is, she insisted that I stay for a cup of coffee and that I then leave Jackson in her care for the hour that I ran errands. Having been a bit rushed that morning, I agreed. I decided to ignore the household chores that had mounted at home. Even the breakfast crumbs on the table were getting staler and colder by the minute. Friendship, I decided, was more important.
After a brief cup of coffee and some chit chat, I found myself in the parking lot of my favorite cosmetic store. Tooling along the aisles, I realized that this was the first time I had been without children in months. In fact, the last time had been when I went Christmas shopping in Munich. I was in heaven.
Back at my friend’s house an hour later, all the children were playing harmoniously. Her husband called to ask her to pick him up for lunch. Though I had an appointment in twenty-five minutes, she begged me to watch the kids while she got her husband at work. She snapped on the TV, and the kids were happy as punch. Meanwhile, as I waved her good-bye, I considered cleaning up the lunch dishes. Searching for her dish washing liquid, it occurred to me that she had none, for obvious reasons. Her trash can overflowed, and the food that had been lobbed on the floor by our fiesty bunch could have fed an army of mice. There was no way to clean up the mounting pile of dirty dishes that lay before me. I straightened up as best I could and wished that I could have helped her more.
When she returned from her brief errand, she thanked me for such a restful morning! Her two children happily played with mine, and she was able to relax for the first time in ages. While I felt I should be the one thanking her for my shopping foray alone, we both agreed that the morning had been a success.
When I got home with my son that early afternoon, the breakfast crumbs smiled up at me from their gooey nest on our dining table. They had waited for me, and I knew that I had made the right decision that morning: friendship over crumbs with a pal is better than a clean house all alone.
Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of Diary of a Mother:
Parenting Stories and Other Stuff and SAHM I Am: Tales of a Stay-at-Home
Mom in Europe (May 2005), has been published in hundreds of publications.
When she isn’t writing, leading intensive seminars or wiping up messes, she
prefers to frolic in the Bavarian countryside near Munich where she lives
with her husband and two children. Visit her Web site:
http://www.DiaryofaMother.com.
