Bonding with Mom
by Chrissy LooneyIt was night time, and I was young, maybe four or five. My mom was babysitting Rachel who was my age and Levi who was a couple years younger than us. My mom had just finished stenciling the stairway wall. She was proud of her stenciled blue bows and pink flowers with green stems too. Rachel and I were being good girls coloring pictures with my crayons. These were no ordinary looking crayons, they were animal shaped. I remembered how much mom loved my pictures. She would put them on the refrigerator; I liked it when she did that. I also noticed how much she liked her stenciling. There was a wall that had no stenciling on it. Wouldn’t mom love it if we drew her pictures on the wall! So Rachel and I began our wall art.
Next thing we knew we were being yelled at by my mom. She asked us why we were drawing on the walls. Guilt was instantaneous. That was not the reaction we were expecting. We did not want to take the credit for the wall art anymore. Well, who could we blame it on, Sam our German Sheppard, or Levi the younger brother? We blamed Levi for the drawings. Unfortunately I was caught red handed; Levi was fast asleep during our art session. I remember looking down at my hands; I found the red lion crayon staring up at me with one ear missing.
The aftermath of the punishment is where the mother daughter bonding comes in. I had no idea what was coming, but from the looks of things it was bad. I was confused, why she was leading me to the bathroom. She picked up my yellow toothbrush and the new blue and white Dial bar of soap. I was thinking this was very strange and I was scared. What on earth could an angry mom do with a toothbrush and soap?
She got my toothbrush wet and began to scrub the bar of soap so much the letters D-I-A-L were surely scrubbed off. She turned to me and said you will not lie to me, the lie makes your mouth dirty and it needs to be cleaned. That's not good I thought. So my first tactic was tears, my second tactic was no mom no, and nothing worked. She was brushing every square millimeter of my mouth especially my tongue and not brushing gently either. I was sitting on the floor in between the toilet and the wall gagging and crying and struggling. All this commotion woke Levi up. Through my tears I see a blurry Levi. His facial expression was shock and fear. I couldn’t look at Levi for long; my attention was directed back to the toothbrush which had left my mouth for another scrub on the bar of soap to further diminish the letters. This time there was a question, are you going to lie again? Not daring to look at my mom, and keeping my eyes on the soapy toothbrush at all times I shake my head no. I was not allowed to rinse the soap out of my mouth for what seemed like forever, but eventually I did.
My mom and my relationship changed after that. Before that incident my mom trusted me. After that my mom would make sure by checking on me. She would ask if she needed to get the toothbrush if she ever questioned any of my responses. It was the first time I had to grow up and take full responsibility and consequences for my actions. To this day I still get a Dial taste in my mouth when I lie. No matter how hard I try I can't lie to my mom, and if I manage to, I fess up later because I can not handle the internal turmoil. Now we have a more honest relationship, and we bond better now, because there is earned trust.