When we were first in the newspaper business, my mother used to clip out articles, and we thought it was so she could make scrapbooks for her grandkids.
We still have some of them, and we don’t know when they were written because she didn’t think the dates were important. But we look at them once in a while, sometimes with a smile.
My space here today contains one that I wrote in about 1985, forty years ago, and I thought you might enjoy it, since similar stories have probably played out at your house as well.
……
It was just an unused cushion.
It had been sitting on the bench by the back door for months. Nobody ever sat on it, leaned on it, or even looked at it, except to wonder why it was there.
So yesterday, rather than get into my ski pants for a quick snow machine ride, I grabbed the cushion, popped it onto the machine and was off like a flash.
But someone saw me.
Not the kids.
Someone else.
And in a fraction of a second, the cushion became The Cushion.
“Did Duane take The Cushion out on that snow machine?” someone asked.
The kids didn’t know.
“What in the wide world is he doing? That Cushion isn’t for snow machining,” someone said.
The kids still didn’t know.
But like most kids, they knew something. In fact, they knew quite a bit. They knew that Dad was in a pack of trouble. Big time. And the poor guy didn’t even know it.
The kids also knew something else.
They knew that while they didn’t have anything to do with The Cushion going for a snow machine ride, they would be better off being somewhere other than where someone could talk to them.
“This kitchen looks like a pigstye!” someone said. “Can’t anyone ever pick anything up around here?”
Now the kids know that that’s a question, but they also know that it is not the kind of question they want to tangle with, so they keep as quiet as church mice.
Kids have a knack for trying to answer questions where they have half a chance. And they know they have no chance with “Can’t anyone ever pick up anything around here?”
The kids weren’t too sure how many more of these little bullets they might have to face, but a quiet calm settled over them when they saw me pull up in front of the house with, yes, The Cushion, firmly ensconced on the seat. They wonder if there is any way, in the interest of family harmony, that it could get miraculously inside the house and onto the bench before someone saw it.
But no.
Like the attorney with the case clinched and only one final wrap-up argument to make while going for the kill, someone moved slowly across the kitchen, down the hall…to meet me at the back door.
Not knowing anything of the magnitude of the greeting I might expect…I open it. There she stands, right beside where The Cushion has laid for the last thirty months.
“Did you have That Cushion on the snow machine?”
Now you know it’s nice to be grown up, but it’s also nice to be able to revert to your childhood occasionally, and not being any smarter than the kids, I too have learned to keep quiet sometimes, knowing full well that there may be other constructive questions coming after that one.
And I was right.
“What were you doing with That Cushion out there in the snow?”
I didn’t really know how much of a pickle I was in until I saw three little faces around the corner with one of those ‘we-sure-hope-you-can-get-yourself-out-of-this-one-looks.’
Bravely, I ventured forth.
“Are you expecting one of those cushions upstairs to wear out soon?” I asked, knowing full well that we never sit on them. Ever.
I’m not sure if my question ever got answered, and, of course, it didn’t matter. The Cushion won’t be going outside anymore. From now on, it will stay on the bench just inside the back door.
If you are ever there, look for it. Teal green, with flowers.
Forty, fifty, sixty months from now, it’ll be there.
And all the while, the kids and I will know that that is exactly where it belongs.
Some things in life are really easy to figure out.
