The Broken Wheel

I'm putting the last of the laundry away and I hear sniffles. Turner is just waking up from his nap. His allergies are wild after a day at the swimming pool. I wait at the top of the stairs for a few minutes and sneak forward while he sniffles around his room making his way out of the bed. When he sees me lurking at the corner of his bedroom door he sweeps his hand around the back of my legs as he walks beside me toward the stairs. He asks me a question that I cannot recall and I say no. I pick up the pillows on the floor and put them in the closet while Turner remembers he needs to use the bathroom. From the toilet he senses my approach to the stairs and calls out, "Come watch me poop Mom."

I go to the bedroom and sit on the corner of the bed for a few minutes trying to ascertain why Turner thinks I want to watch him. I go in the bathroom and start plucking my eyebrows while he entertains me with conversation for the next fifteen minutes. Finally he is finished and sits on the floor to put on his underwear. He tells me, "There was a guy falling in the toilet."

"Really? Who?" (I wondered if my sister was sending him brainwaves about the time I fell in the toilet).

"Some guy. It was on T.V."

"Oh. Really? I'll have to ask Dad about that one."

We are at the sink by this time, washing our hands. "I'm so sorry about one of the wheels."

"What wheels?"

"The broken one."

"On TV?" I'm thinking the T.V. conversation continues.

"No." He's emphatic. "One of our wheels."

My mind rewinds to this morning when Turner stood between my feet as I slopped a rag around the kitchen floor on all fours. As I mopped I found a broken wheel under the table. Who knew how long it had been there? I put it on the table and continued mopping. Turner asked what it was. I told him it was a broken wheel to the table. He asked how it got broken. I handed it to him, told him I didn't know, and asked him to go upstairs and ask Dad if he knew what happened. It was a sloppy attempt to get Turner out from between my feet so I could finish mopping. Now my mind connects the wheel from this morning to Turner's apology about it.

"On the table? In the kitchen?"

His eyes drop to his hands as he continues to rub them under the water. "Yeah."

"Do you know how that wheel broke?"

"Yes."

"You do?"

"No."

"Did something run into the wheel?"

"Yeah. My car."

"And then the wheel broke?"

"Yeah." He climbs down from his stool. "I'm so sorry I broke your wheel." I tell him it is OK. We walk into the office, I grab the computer to take downstairs so I can write this blog. The wheel is on the desk next to the laptop (from where Turner brought it upstairs to Andy earlier). Turner points to it, "There it is Mommy. There is that wheel."

"Yeah. Do you want to carry it downstairs?"
"Oh no. Oh no. I don't want to touch that wheel at all."

The picture is the side effect of writing this blog! Shortly after the conversation we shared, Turner tells me we are going outside to play with his new nerf gun, and I absently agree. While I continue to type, he gets "ready" to go.