Mom Smiled

Flash Fiction

Mom Smiled

Alice jumped hearing her daughter Tina scream upstairs. A frustrated scream. Tina was eleven. Up Mom went.

“What’s up?” she asked getting to the door.

“I lost my phone.”

“I’ll call you; we’ll hear it ring.”

“That won’t work, I put it on silence last night because Jean called me three times to blabber about Joe Hinky. I needed to study for the geography test! Now I can’t find it.”

“Did you check the bathroom?”

“Yes, not there.”

Mom sighed, looking at Alice’s room. Things piled everywhere including clothes, some clean, others not, dishes, explaining why there weren’t enough downstairs… piles and piles. “I’ll help you look, if you promise to clean this room this weekend!”

A promise was made, the phone was in her bathrobe pocket the whole time. Off she went to school.

Mom couldn’t wait, she was good at cleaning, Alice good at schoolwork. Mom cleaned the room as a surprise.

Alice was delighted, as she tossed her books, and pocketbook, and coat, on the floor.

“Alice!” Mom yelled, startling Alice, “clean your room!”

Alice looked at her mother like Mom had gone crazy. “Are you OK?” she asked softly.

“I’m fine,” Mom said, “I just don’t want to do this again.”

“But it’s clean already…”

“You just made it unclean tossing everything on the floor. Put your stuff where it should be, then you will be able to find it.”

Alice laughed, but she also did it. Thinking it was a pretty good joke from Mom.

However, the joke popped into her mind every time she looked for something after that. Within a couple days she had made decisions on where things needed to go to be easily found, and suddenly her room was clean, all the time.

And Mom smiled every time she saw it.