This morning Abby picked up her school sweater (jumper) that had been hanging on the back of a chair to dry. She touched the sleeves and realized they were still damp. She informed me, “The sweater’s not dry.” Being a mom, I replied, “It’s not that wet, just put it on.”

So, she put on the sweater and stood with her arms held disgustingly away from her body and gave me the look that all thirteen year old girls give their mothers when they obey their mothers full well knowing to the very core of their being that their mother is wrong.

I replied to this look with the standard Mom phrase, “It’ll dry.” I had already said this to myself earlier that morning as I was hurriedly stuffing a running shirt into Josiah’s gear bag.The shirt was damp, “It’ll dry,” I told myself.

Because I am a mom, I  was thinking of her spending an entire rainy, foggy day at school without a sweater to keep her warm. She had just recovered from two days of illness after getting soaking wet and cold at a party. In my mind, she needed her sweater…be it wet or dry.

There are always moments in a scene when you can step back from the edge of mom thinking madness, but it is so very hard. So instead of saying “Don’t wear the sweater,” I gave her a ridiculous mom solution. “Go upstairs, get the hair dryer, set it to high and dry the sleeves.”