I know the “c” word, mommy

My entire extended family was around the dining room table at the cottage, after one of those perfect days where everyone got along and no one ended up at Emerg. The  laughing, singing and eating were dramatically interrupted when my then 8 year old said “Mommy, I know the “c” word”.  I am no church mouse but the ‘c’ word has always reduced me and sent a shiver up my back. As we had been on an eight year sabbatical  from all good and raw swear words above “stupid” (parenting does this to you), I asked my cherub to whisper the word in my ear. She was flushed with responsibility, thinking maybe she would be the first to introduce me to the word. She carefully, quietly whispered in my ear, “crap”. I somehow was able to pretend that it was the big one I thought it was and told her, “now, my darling, you have in your vocabulary the word you will use when you slam the door on your finger.”

These days , as a single parent doing everything for myself and my girls in a very busy time in a house built almost a century ago, I find I swear like a seasoned truck driver. There was the flash flood in my basement, the tree branch that fell on my car, the leak in the shower that came through to the kitchen, a Mercedes SUV that took off my side view mirror and did not stop, as I sat parked on Yonge street, and extreme volume of other nasty stuff that, if I listed it here, would make me revisit it bitterly. Suffice to say my swearing has made its way through the entire alphabet but still the only”c’ word I use is the one Charlotte taught me. Every truck driver has to have her boundaries.