Preventive medicine

My alarm went off almost four years ago. He said “mom, mom, mom” several times until I hugged him and showered him with kisses.

Then the usual routine: choosing clothes, fighting to get out of pajamas, jumping on the bed for a while until the extra minutes are over, and when we have already missed a few, we have to finish dressing and get up for breakfast. Sock on the left foot, or should I start with the right? Who cares. Sock on the left foot … Oh! Take a tomato! The big toe of the left foot sticks out of the hole, sticks out round, pink, so delicious that I eat it. I am looking for another pair of socks and continue to waste not the remaining minutes.

Let’s have breakfast! Heard from the kitchen. “Dad is calling us,” he says nervously. We race, and I look at the table to see if anything is missing: cups, spoons, coffee, milk, cookies, muffins … everything is there. A cup of coffee with milk and half a tablespoon of sugar. Today there is no sugar in the sugar bowl, it’s time to empty the bag that is on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet. I have to climb up on a stool to pick it up and hold out my arms like Inspector Gadget. When I finally get to it, hearing the crackle of four or five vertebrae, I make my way to the table, leaving a trail of white in my wake. There is a hole in the bag of sugar. I fill the sugar bowl and pick up this cute snake with a broom. Those grains of sugar, which may well be the sand of the clock. I’ve wasted so many extra minutes and the clock is pushing me to the bathroom so I don’t get lost. Let’s go brush our teeth.

The mirror brings back our smiling faces and tousled hair. After we untied the knots and lowered the kickiriki, I scratch my earlobes, thinking that maybe today I will wear earrings. But something brings me out of my thoughts: run, mom, it’s almost a quarter to now! Her voice alerts me to what I already know, and I think about the uselessness of holes in my ears, about how rarely I wear earrings! Today I no longer have time to look for them, now it is my son pushing me to the front door.

We finally open to leave the house, and I put in my pocket those four coins that belong to no one and have been lying in the hall for several days. We take the first step, and I feel something cold running down my leg, and it falls to the ground in a clone, a wedge, a clan. What’s happening? I just put these coins in my pocket. With an incredulous expression, I repeat the gesture to put them back, and they fall again, as if someone is sliding down a water slide. I have a hole in my pocket. I’ll have to forget that these pants have pockets or take the time to patch up the hole, which I should have learned when my mother tried to teach me but then I just wanted to go out and play.

Who is driving today, mom or dad? In the end, it depends on him. The car starts without problems, the garage door opens when you press a button on the remote control. We immediately choose a story from those that have already filled the rear seats. The one with the pirate, the one with the mice, the one with the yellow dot… When we finally have a chosen one, I read as fast as I can so I can finish before we get to our destination. The bad thing about short driving distances and long walking distances if you’re wearing a twenty-five. At the very last moment, the story crashes, closing the last unread page. Monumental pothole, hole in the road, hole!

Case goes holes; there is one in the brains of many, but those holes cannot be changed, neither patched, nor used, nor dodged. Or if?

I’ll read a book on preventive medicine, just in case.