Hump Day by Juliana Delany

The sliding glass door to the kitchen won’t budge. It does that sometimes, locking up behind you like an anxious grandmother. I leave the boys on the back deck with the remains of their breakfast and half-run around to the front door. Please, please, please. But it’s locked too, tight as a drum, of course it is. I jog back on the other side of the house, the driveway side, pretending I don’t see our eighty-something neighbor, Mr. Billingham, watering his lilacs. Our garage door is firmly and decidedly down, which makes it official: we are locked out of our own house. At 8:15 in the morning. On a school day.

I’m not a morning person. Mornings have always been tough for me, and mornings with kids? Exponentially more so. But this takes the cake. How could I be so stupid? For a split second emotion takes over: helpless anger, a temptation to wallow in my failure, maybe even to cry. But there’s no time. As I hurry back to the deck, my thoughts run rampant: We’ll be late will the neighbors find out will the cops be involved I really need to pee. And: why-oh-why didn’t I hide an emergency key like Dad always said?

My two little boys are waiting at the picnic table, finishing their breakfast. We’d been uncharacteristically organized this morning, with some extra time, and decided to eat al fresco in the late spring sunshine. Strawberry jelly smears Aidan’s cheeks, and a trail of crumbs litters Austin’s red Dino Jam tee shirt. 

“Looks like we’re locked out,” I say, trying for casual, trying to tamp down the fight-or-flight flurry in my chest. I’ve been working on my responses to the unexpected, on controlling the controllable, and I’ve been succeeding about half the time. The boys watch me warily. They know me well, know my slow-to-warm-up brain is hard-wired for impatience. 

I breathe deep and check my watch: 8:18. We are twelve minutes away from missing the first bell, and both boys’ backpacks are upstairs in their bedrooms. I know the downstairs windows are locked; I checked them myself last night. Eyeing the second story from the deck, I see that Austin’s window, with its red fire rescue sticker, is open a couple of inches, cobwebs frosting its dark screen. All I need is a ladder, which I quickly locate in our garden shed. The boys, excited, help me carry it to the deck and settle it against the house.

“Stand back, guys,” I say, and mount the rusty first rung, hoping the ladder’s rubber stoppers are in good repair. When I reach the top I look down at the boys; their upturned faces shine like new moons. Austin reaches out to hold Aidan’s hand. “Careful, mom,” he says in a small voice.

Holding on to the top of the ladder with one hand, I use the other to push the window up as far as it will go. The screen punches loose easily and falls inward onto Austin’s bed. I follow it arms first, pushing it to the floor as I wriggle my legs through the window, swiping at clinging cobwebs. Now I’m belly-down on the worn, cottony softness of Austin’s night-sky comforter. Beneath my cheek are unmade bed smells: fresh air and stale detergent, the musty funk of little-boy sweat. I roll over and lie still, bathed in sweet relief, breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling. Amid the scattering of glow-in-the-dark stars I see the row of three we placed so carefully: Orion’s Belt. 

It’s near-silent in the little room; time has collapsed upon itself like a black hole. For the first time all morning I’m at peace, and I feel a brief, deep longing to be a child, in a child’s bed. Nowhere else to be. 

I hear the boys below. “I am not!” says Aidan, and then Austin laughs a big-brother, know-it-all laugh and says, “Oh yes, you are!” and Aidan’s voice rises further in indignation, his buttons decidedly pushed. I think of the coming school day with its assignments and assessments, of my own lengthy to-do list and our complicated after-school schedule. Play dates, music lessons, karate. Such crowded agendas for ones so small. What if today we just… refused?

But no. Aidan has his last show-and-tell of the year today–he’s sharing a fossil from our trip to Maine–and Austin has a spelling test he’s studied hard for. And we are, at this point, decidedly late. If we leave right now, run the three blocks to our snug little neighborhood school, the boys will miss the Pledge of Allegiance but might make it in time for Morning Sing. It’s the best I can do, and still not good enough. 

My heart rate, which has slowed to a manageable thrum in the gentle cocoon of my child’s bed, kicks up again. I use the bathroom in record time, barrel down the stairs, let the boys in, wipe faces, grab lunches, and pocket my key. Moments later, backpacks balanced precariously on their slight frames, the boys try to keep up as I lunge down the driveway. Mr. Billingham is watering his rhododendrons.

“Hello, boys! Good morning, Christina.”

“We were locked out of our house!” Austin yells as we trot by. “Mom had to climb in my window!” There is something like pride in his voice.

“Hmmm,” says Mr. Bellingham, picturing this. “No spare key? You should probably hide one outside somewhere.”

But we’ve already blown past him. We’re halfway down Lantern Lane, the boys fast on my heels. I can tell from the slap-slaps on the sidewalk behind me that Aidan is wearing flipflops, deeply frowned upon at school. And it’s a gym day! But it’s too late to go back. I look over at Austin, whose jaw is rigid with concentration, his face too serious for a seven-year-old. He meets my eye and tries to smile. “It’s okay, Mom,” he says. “It’s not really your fault.” 

We’re a block away now, and with everyone else already in the building, it’s a straight shot down Elm Street to the school. Adrenaline pumping, I bellow like a boot-camp sergeant:  “Keep up, boys! We’re almost there!” Trying to run faster, Aidan trips over his flipflop and falls hard onto the sidewalk. Austin and I pull up short: Aidan is clutching his knee, where two ragged postage stamps of skin have peeled away. Dots of blood are squeezing to the surface and Aidan, his face pinched, is squeezing back tears.

For what? I think suddenly. For nothing that can’t be made up, redone, rescheduled. My boys are five and seven, with a lifetime of days ahead, some ordinary and tedious, some thrillingly memorable. Days to be sick or well, to be late or on time, to mess up or to nail it. To fall onto unforgiving surfaces, and to get up. What’s the hurry? I’ve been racing these small humans through their evaporating childhoods, toward my own flawed idea of perfection. Trying to outrun my fear of failing motherhood–the best job, and the hardest, I’ve ever had.

I take a ragged, cleansing breath.  “Hey,” I say, taking a tissue from my pocket and blotting Aidan’s bloody knee, “want to take a day off today? It’s Wednesday. Hump Day! We could have a special holiday right in the middle of the week, just for us.”

Austin stares at me, agape. “But. Mom. My spelling test.” 

“I’ll email Ms. Hunter and tell her you’ll take it tomorrow. And I bet Aidan can do his show-and- tell tomorrow, too.”

My boys, so well programmed to show up, to accomplish, still look unsure. 

“We have lunch and drinks with us,” I say, “and it’s a beautiful day. How about we play in the park for the morning and have a picnic? Then we’ll go home and watch a movie.”

It dawns on them that this could be real, and the corners of their mouths begin to twitch. Their eyes look years younger. They grin at each other like they’ve just been announced the winners of something. 

“Yes!” says Aidan. His older brother helps him off the sidewalk, and they high-five.

We retrace our steps, back past our house and toward the park, walking slowly this time, making plans. We stop to talk to Mr. Billingham, who has moved to his side yard and is picking peonies. Their fluffy heads bob and nod like good neighbors.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t talk before,” I say. “We were in a hurry, but that’s no excuse.”

“We’re having a special day at the park!” Aidan tells him. “It’s Hump Day.”

“So it is,” said Mr. Billingham, handing me a perfect pink blossom. “Happy Hump Day!”

I wait for a comment about skipping school, but none comes. As we move on down the sidewalk, I tuck the flower behind my ear.

“Hey look,” says Austin, “there’s a morning moon today! It’s a waxing gibbous.” 

I feel Aidan slide his small hand into mine. “You can have half my sandwich, Mom,” he says. And together we walk on, into the promise of the moonlit morning.

Juliana Delany holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in Publication Management. Her stories “Trespass Point” and “Red Bird, or Eleanor at the End,” have won or placed in short story competitions, and her collection, “Trespass Point and Other Stories,” was a finalist in the 2023 Maine Chapbook Series. She and her husband, Jack, have four grown children and are dual residents of the Philadelphia region and Downeast Maine. She is fond of all trees, some dogs, wild birds and homemade desserts. www.julianadelany.com