Love And Skibbies

After thirty minutes of heaping, scooping, and pouring plastics of green and blue and yellow and red and clear and every other color into a bin at the bottom of her son’s bookcase, only a few Legos and a pair of cartooned briefs besmudged the blessed whiteness of her carpet.

Those were her son’s favorite pair—of anything, underwear or not. A once-red-now-pink monster-truck strode across the rump, and holes had burrowed along the band. Grass and crayon and smatterings of food had taken its once-white hill, despite waves of detergent, and marked their claim with a shade between Folgers and marmalade. And still he wore them every day.

Her clash of plastics crossed the hall, and her husband called from the living room. “What are you doing?”

“Tidying up.”

“Well cut it out. Can’t hear the TV.”

She sour-mouthed can’t hear the TV as she tossed the last Lego into the bin.

“Did you say something?”

She grabbed the skibbies—dirty—and looked around for the hamper. No hamper. Must still be in the laundry room. “Just that I love you.”

She walked to the closet, slung the butt-costume into the dark space under the hanging clothes, and shut the door.

There. Tidy.