My 12-year-old son Daniel sprints through the kitchen and family room, his five friends trailing close behind, their mud-soled sneakers scattered near the front door. Jumping over their dropped hooded sweatshirts and Little League baseball caps, it’s as if these items are mini-hurdles at a track meet. I note the footprints on my freshly mopped floors. The powder room faucet is running, but no one is in there, and almost all of the 50 hand towels I had put out are already scrunched up, some on the floor and some in the garbage can.
The boys scurry around looking for hiding spots, a couple emptying the skis and snow boots tucked away in the coat closet. “You’re it!” one of them yells, as the others disburse, like little ants, trying to find hiding spaces behind couches, under tables and in nooks and corners of every room. “My room and Emily’s room are off limits,” I say, thinking of my bras and my teenage daughter’s bathing suits hanging on the drying rack in the corner of my room.
One boy is under the desk in the kitchen, his brown matted hair covering one of his eyes. He moves the desk chair just so in front of his now curled-up-like-a-ball-body, to ensure he is camouflaged. “Psst,” he whispers, his pointed finger now resting on his lips, as if I need this gesture as an unofficial bystander of the game. Two other boys whiz by, dodging in and out of the family room. They look under tables, behind doors, reconnaissance for their possible hiding spots before settling on separate ends under the sofa table behind the sectional. Giggles and whispers come from the coat closet, lots of “shhs” from what sounds like upstairs, maybe in the kids’ bathroom. I’m hoping no one chose to hide in the shower.
“17,18, 19, 20,” they count, followed by the familiar “ready or not here I come.” Do I really want these boys running through my house, leaving random smelly socks everywhere, pulling tote bags and snow boots out of the front hall closet to find their perfect hiding spot? A day like this shouldn’t surprise me. These are the boys that seem to always come over right after my fridge has been stocked with cold cuts and snacks from my weekly run to Stew Leonard’s. And, of course it’s always on the same day my house has just been professionally cleaned.
I could have made the six boys play tag outside, have them run free on our two plus acres of property where they could hide behind mature elm trees, evergreens, and overgrown rhododendron bushes. But it was an unseasonably cold day out. And, even though they had all worn shorts to school in sub freezing temperatures, I knew the warmth of my house was where they wanted to be. And that’s exactly where I wanted them—even with their dirty socks, their constant screaming and the trail of crumbs all over my once clean kitchen floor.
I love the din of 12-year-old boy laughter. I love that they prefer congregating around my kitchen table instead of hiding down in the basement or locked up in Daniel’s room. I linger by the food pantry in corner of the kitchen keeping very quiet—just as I do in the car—hoping the phone doesn’t ring or the dog doesn’t bark, anything so the boys won’t notice me, so as not to remind them that I am right here, in earshot of their tween conversations.
The time will come when these boys, including Daniel, will drive. When they will no longer choose to zigzag through my house screeching, “you’re it.” When sitting around my kitchen table, eating turkey sandwiches and drinking hot chocolate with mini marshmallows, and telling “knock-knock” jokes and playing Apples to Apples, will be but a distant memory.
“Thank you, Mrs. Olin,” they all say, almost in unison, as they dump their paper plates into the garbage can and move out of the kitchen and into the playroom for some indoor basketball. The repeated thump of the ball as it hits the back of the door sets the rhythm as our Labrador Retriever, Tobey, has a feast under the kitchen table with the scraps the boys have left behind.
Will Daniel’s friends remember hanging out at our house? And, if so, I wonder what they will remember? When I was 12, I loved going to my friends’ houses. My best friend Cheryl’s house is still clear to me. She had a candy drawer, not just on Halloween, but all year round; filled with mini Snickers and Milky Ways and Hershey’s with almonds. We ate bagels with Velveeta and drank our lemon flavored iced tea at her kitchen table. But we couldn’t run around her house freely, the all-white living room off limits, with its milky colored leather couches and matching oversized shag rug. Unlike Daniel and his friends, we stayed down in her basement or in her room, playing record albums, talking about boys, and planning our next Friday night outing. Her house smelled like an ashtray, both of her parents heavy smokers. Even when we were in her room, with the door closed, the odor of tobacco lingered in the air.
Will Daniel’s friends associate our house with a smell, like the fresh scent of clean laundry? Or the aroma of my homemade banana bread? Will they remember playing tag and my turkey sandwiches and the indoor basketball games? Will they look back with a fondness, as I will, with a mental snapshot of a group of happy 12-year-old boys running wildly through my home? I sure hope so.
“Ready or not, here I come,” Daniel yells from the playroom as yet another game of tag begins. And it is these words that stay with me when the boys leave, when Daniel helps me with the couch cushions and the coat closet clean up and the mess left everywhere. I wish I could hold onto these moments; but these days of Daniel and his friends romping through my house won’t last. Their teenage years are oh so close—they will soon become more guarded, want more privacy, spend more time behind closed doors. I don’t know if I’m ready or not for what lies ahead.
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