Last night, I was following a pipe in the basement while dealing with a minor plumbing issue. When I pointed my flashlight to look behind the shower wall, the light landed on a strategically placed empty beer can.
Who knows how long it had been hidden there? If I had to guess, I’d say since my son was in high school, so a good 15 years at least. When I figured out how he got it there, I laughed and cursed his originality. Retrieving it was a bit of a task for me, and I imagine he struggled just as much to get it there.
It wasn’t the first time he’d taken extreme measures to hide an empty. I’m not much of a drinker, and if there was a 6-pack of anything in the house, I knew for certain how many should be in the fridge.
When I noticed I was short a hard lemonade, he swore up and down he knew nothing about it, even taunting me to check the trash for the empty. Most tall tales are anchored in a sliver of truth, and his big mistake was daring me to check the trash.
When he finally came clean and said he buried the empty behind the garage, I sent him for a shovel to dig it up.
Truth be told, it was hard not to laugh. Mostly, I wanted to be sure there weren’t any other shenanigans in his secret graveyard. I wonder what I might find today if I launched a full-scale excavation?!
When he was older, we were reminiscing one night and playing a round of tell-the-truth. That’s when he started boasting about the hiding spot in his room. He would stand on the corner of his bed, move the wallboard ceiling tile, and drop things into the rafter space. The giveaway there was that he left a trail of wallboard crumbles on the floor every time, or he’d put the tile back a bit lopsided. It was obvious something amuck was happening there.
He asked, “How come you never said anything…?” and then laughed when I said I was “monitoring” the spot and was always relieved to find what felt like small fish, i.e., a pack of smokes, a couple of girly magazines, and a risqué movie that the neighborhood boys were most likely passing around!
When I laughed over finding this beer can last night, I could hear him laughing back with a tease, saying, “It took you long enough… I thought you said you knew everything!”
And there it is again…
I don’t want to remove that last sentence, yet I can’t help but notice the truth I’ve bumped into.
One I tried to ignore already when I erased an earlier line about him having a lousy poker face.
Turns out I didn’t know everything, baby boy.
And you were pretty good at hiding things.
I suppose that’s the bittersweet nature that comes with precious memories and perhaps future finds of hidden treasures.
Always a tear and a smile.
Oh, how I’ll always love you with plenty of room in my heart for both.
