A VERITABLE CUSHION OF HARDENED POOP - Liane Graham

Whenever we would stay with my grandparents in Tel Aviv, my sister and I would sleep on the pullout couch in the Blue Room. The Blue Room was not blue – it was a TV room that had supposedly once contained blue furniture, but I only knew its bright purple paisley couch and matching armchair. Nevertheless, the name stuck.
One night when I was seven years old I woke up from my sleep, and it was not from the jetlag that was usually responsible for waking me in the middle of night. Something was definitely off. I quietly crept out of bed, careful to avoid the wire that jutted out the side and had already scraped my thigh a few times before, and careful not to wake my sister, whose head had somehow managed to lay where her feet had been only a few hours ago. I tiptoed to the bathroom and pulled down my Princess Jasmine underpants. There it was: a veritable cushion of hardened poop. I was so embarrassed. I was a big girl, too old to be treating my underpants like a diaper. The poop was caked on. I didn’t know what to do with it, other than clean my own bottom, which, believe me, was challenging enough at the time. I didn’t have any poop-related dreams. I didn’t feel the pooping process as it was happening. I just woke up, and there it was, all over my underwear. I did what I always did with dirty laundry: I tossed it in the hamper. Instead of going back to sleep, I lay in bed praying until daybreak that nobody would notice the brown brick sitting at the bottom of the laundry drawer.
When morning came, I waited. I was terrified of getting in trouble. My mother was the sort of person who took dirt very seriously. I knew that eventually someone would figure out what I had done, and that I would be on the receiving end of my mother’s legendary Israeli bark-and-slap combo deal. Sure enough, that moment came when I heard her shout, “Liaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane!”
I stalled for a minute, bracing myself, and walked into the bathroom. She was dangling my soiled underwear on her pinky, only, she didn’t look angry at all!
“Why did you put this in the hamper?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t want to wake you up.” What I really meant was, I didn’t want to her to think I was still a baby. Instead of shouting, she laughed, and told me what to do in case it ever happened again. I swore it wouldn’t, still not convinced that I was out of trouble.
To my surprise, my mother, and this was completely out of character for her, did not punish me. I think she realized that sometimes, the shame is punishment enough.