Laundry is a big fat bummer

She sat on the middle of the floor of the living room in their quaint two bedroom home in the middle of the stix South Carolina (real place). The task of folding old tattered blue jeans and ill-fitting underpants daunting. Her mother sat on the newest chair next to the fireplace that produced heat she couldn't feel; not now, not for a long time, not forever. Her father would have sat there on the floor with her and made jokes about mother and the cats with their seizure disorders, but he was on vacation and had been for seven years.

The children had been in bed for quite some time, with dreams floating about in their amygdalas about swing sets and hopskotch. Their slumber slight and carefree. She longed to join them and be rid of this laundry; the laundry that permeated her thirteen year old life.

Mother fixed more wine for herself, sucking her teeth as her feet scooted across the stained, but clean, carpet. As the laundry finished itself, she, the thirteen year old parent, looked to her mother, tears welling in her graying eyes. She tried not to sniffle, tried not to interrupt the television program. Mother didn't notice a thing.

"Mom," she said meekly. There was no response. The tears surged down her young cheeks, and the urge to sniffle strengthened. "Mom," she said more urgently. Mother looked at her, "What?" Mother complained. "Mom, I'm really having a hard time here," she explained to the best of her ability. "But the laundry's finished, thank you," her mother responded, looking back to the television. The tears poured now, from the broken faucet of her blues singing soul. "Mom, I've been thinking a lot about killing myself," she said conversationally, to lighten the blow of the statement. "No, you haven't," her mother said matter-o-factly without looking at her. The thirteen year old got up, and took the laundry to the small dark hallway in the back of the sleepy house. Her feet were cold and she wanted to get in the bathtub to escape the awkwardness of the situation that she felt so overwhelmingly esponsible for causing.

Though it was full of her thoughts, the bathtub was her refuge. It contained no one and nothing but brightness and water and her trembling body. Mother never knocked. But it sure did feel lovely to let the water run all over her attention starved body. The body that is still inhabited by that wanting thirteen year old. Where is she now? I'd really like to talk to her, give her a hug and tell her that it's ok to eat too many cookies, smoke a little too much pot and have a beer to calm the problems of her world. That's what being an adult is all about, I suppose.