From 2018
ME (searching in my daughter’s dresser, after listening to her complain for half an hour that she has no clean socks):
“Oh look! Clean socks! Ooo! More! Imagine that! Look at them all!”
(I pick up every sock in the drawer and drop them on the floor dramatically, as my daughter laughs.)
ME: “Did you KNOW you have this really cool invention in your room, where little panels of wood cover these box-like thingies that you can actually slide out, to reveal your clothing, all hiding here in secret piles?” (More laughter.)
ME: “Oh my god WHAT is this?!”
(Holding up her favorite pair of shorts she couldn’t find last summer, the ones she complained — rather judgmentally — that I lost in the laundry, and has complained about, several times during the past year.)
DAUGHTER (sheepishly): “Oh.”
ME: “These look SO much like the shorts that I OBVIOUSLY must have lost in the laundry, because you looked “everywhere” for them. The shorts that I didn’t look hard enough for.”
DAUGHTER: “Oops.”
(More laughter.)
ME: “That’s just wild. The resemblance is uncanny.”
(I drop the shorts on the floor and continue rummaging in the drawer.)
ME: “Ooo look at THIS!”
(I hold up a t-shirt with a cat looking at the moon.)
DAUGHTER (in the happy voice of seeing a long lost friend):
“Hey! I love that shirt!”
(A few hours later….)
DAUGHTER: “May I have a sip of your coffee?”
ME: “Yes, but first you have to repeat after me.”
DAUGHTER (giggling): “Okay.”
ME: “Mommy.”
DAUGHTER: “Mommy.”
ME: “I’m sorry I judged you for losing my favorite shorts and not helping me hard enough, to look for them.”
DAUGHTER (laughing): “I’m sorry I judged you for losing my favorite shorts and not helping me hard enough, to look for them.”
ME: “Mommy.”
DAUGHTER: “Mommy.”
ME: “You are NEVER wrong.”
(Laughter.) ME: “Well?”
(More laughter.)
DAUGHTER: “I’m not saying that!”
ME (melodramatic sigh): “Okay fine. It was worth a try.”
I give her a sip of my coffee anyway.
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