It was Abi’s birthday today. I was making breakfast in the kitchen, and Alex was playing quietly in the living room. I had left him sitting at my desk, playing with my wallet. (He usually takes all the coins from the coin pouch and arranges them all over my keyboard.)
I was just putting a pat of butter in the bottom of a pan for the scrambled eggs, when Alex wanders through to see me. He had an uncapped purple marker pen in his right hand (the one we use to write on CDs), and was holding the palm of his left hand out to me.
“Mess!” he said. “Mess!”
I took a closer look at his hand, and saw that it had a few lines on it. “Oh yes,” I said, taking away the pen. I was relieved to see that he hadn’t drawn all the way up his sleeve. “Mess. Let’s clean it up, shall we?” Then he took me by the hand, and led me through to the living room, where he showed me the sofa.
“Mess!” he repeated, pointing at the swirly patterns he’d drawn in the centre of each sofa cushion. “Mess!”
I didn’t get angry. I was too surprised and bemused to be angry. But I do think I must have said something like, “Oh Alex, that’s a really bad mess!” in a fairly stern voice, because Alex then turned around and wrapped his arms around my legs and started sobbing miserably. He knew he’d done something wrong. I picked him up and tried to reassure him that it was all okay, while at the same time wondering how to get the stains out–and how to break the news to Abi.
Fortunately, the ink in the pen turned out to be water-soluble, and a cycle through through the washing machine has got them clean again. But I now think that it is in every toddler’s destiny at some point to take a permanent marker pen to some piece of household furniture.