Jen's Column / 5.31.06

This morning, my four-year-old son, Bergen, bounded up the stairs and said, “I need a jar of mustard.”

Then smiled.

After a beat, six-year-old Christian yelled up, “Did you get it yet?”

Bergen smiled, again. Then said, “I just want to look at it.”

I’m writing at the dining room table as the scene unfolds. Seeing that I’m only half paying attention, Bergen dashes to the fridge, opens it, and runs.

I hear a distant, “I got it!” as he bounds down the stairs.

Most women would run now. Take the steps three at a time to save their furniture. Mustard, of course, has magical staining properties making it impossible to remove from any surface.

Frankly I’m surprised they even dare broach the subject with me. I thought my mustard stance was well known. I’ve all but issued an all-out ban in our house.

Shortly after we bought our first home, my husband spilled a bowl of mustard on the new carpet. I found it three days later when I returned home from a business trip.

I’m pretty sure it was the whole first-house thing, but you would’ve thought he drove his car through our bedroom wall the way I carried on. Not only would we never get the stain out, I assured him, but our property values would plummet, we’d never be able to sell our house, and MUSTARD IS EVIL.

The experience is still raw enough that it sends my husband yelling, “Don’t touch the mustard! Mommy will get angry!” when our children, or even guests, reach for the sauce within a 30-foot radius of our home.

But today, Bergen and Christian’s antics are amusing me. So instead of panicking, I go to the top of stairs to listen. “Good job!” I hear my oldest son say. “Now go get the tape.”

Feet patter across the floor, my office door opens, the desk chair rolls out, the heavy tape holder clunks to the floor. “Oof,” Bergen says. He picks it up and feet patter back out to the living room.

“We can make our mustard blaster now,” Bergen announces, excitement mounting.

Obviously, it’s time to step in. One can only imagine what a mustard blaster might do microfiber — and I’m having company on Saturday night.

I’m down the stairs in three seconds flat. “What do you think you’re doing?” I ask in my take-no-prisoners, mommy-knows-what-you’re-up-to voice.

Too young to have developed any kind of poker faces, two telltale smiles and sparkling eyes stare back at me. “Nothing…” says the six-year-old.

“We have mustard!” the four-year-old screams, caving.

I confiscate the wayward condiment and return it to its rightful place in the very back of the fridge — where, I hope, it might be forgotten. I giggle in relief — because not only was the whole thing kind of cute, but the mustard cap was still on tight. We’re safe.

An hour later, strapping Bergen into his car seat, I’ll see it: A quarter-sized yellow stain on his shirtsleeve. And, because I will be unable to remove it, it will mock me for the rest of my days.