The brushing of the teeth

An instruction, first spoke, thenceforth shouted, with varying degrees of exasperation. 

“Samu! Brush your teeth!” 

My bellow follows the fast-paced clatter of his bare feet pelting down our hallway as he rushes, alas, not to the bathroom, instead performing a sharp, last-minute U-turn to the bedroom.

“SAMUUU!”

Swift as a cattle dog who knows her foe, I head him off. My hand fits to his flying blonde head like a socket to a ball as I gently, yet firmly, redirect this flying juggernaut towards his hygienic fate.

“Brush your teeth!”

He bounces up the small plastic steps, reaches the top level and and keeps going, with the aim of resting precariously on the handles of the bathroom cupboard. First one foot finds purchase, then the other as he makes a grab for the toothpaste. His sister’s toothpaste. The grown-up toothpaste. Any toothpaste tube that is not his own and which can therefore be used in a frustrating dance of obfuscation and procrastination.

I restrain him with one hand as I fossick around in the broken-handled toothbrush mug for his toothbrush. In my addled haze and with fugged morning brain I grab the wrong bamboo stick. Which is his again – the pink or the yellow? Ah hah. That’s right. The most dog-eared and bedraggled specimen. The one with the pink band.

While I fight an internal battle with my ailing cognitive powers he seizes the moment to find something to grab and examine – a hair clip, my moisturiser, something, anything to distract him and me from the task at hand. Almost instantly an object is seized, it is removed, in a wordless mother-son dance that we both know well.

As I fumble to retain child, toothbrush and sanity I reach again for *the correct* toothpaste. 

He tries to bolt. I restrain him by voice and my steely arm. He climbs back onto the step ladder. My hand glances over one tube, then seizes the other. I flip the cap, one-handed, with the dexterity and efficiency of a parent of two small children with a chronic case of mum-thumb and splodge red toothpaste onto the tattered receptacle. My arm is poised. My preschooler primed…

“Open!”

His mouth opens. A crack, a sliver. I stab the toothbrush into the reluctant slot, cantilevering to allow for better visuals.

“Open!!” 

I dive first for the left side bottom molar, jiggle the brush with agitation, try to work my way down the tiny surface of neat, yet pitted molars, around and to the other side. His mouth expels the invader.

“Shppppt! Shppppttt!” he cries through clamped teeth.

Samu leans forward, perched as he is and spurts with gusto into the sink. A stream of globulous toothpaste, half foam and half wasted potential, ejects into the basin and I go in for another bout.

This time I head for the right bottom molar.

There will be more skirmishes before this war is won.