The Bucket, the Roof, and the Unexpected Joy

When I was a kid, my dad and I once had the most epic game of Hide-and-Seek that turned into an all-out water fight. My mom was away at a convention, my sister was gone for the summer, and suddenly it was just the two of us. Dad took afternoons off work, and for one whole week we went no-holds-barred on fun.

We had a picnic at the beach. We went to the waterpark. We shopped in Boston. We bought giant sour pickles from barrels at the grocery store. We even watched two musicals. And of course, we had the water fight of all water fights.

I was the rough-and-tumble daughter—boxing with him, chasing each other through the house, playing catch in the front yard. That week, the boundaries of fun got pushed to their limit. I’ll never forget running through the house with water guns, hiding from my dad and ultimately climbing through my sister’s bedroom window up onto the roof to be the champion hider and winner of the war. We laughed so hard that we cried. It became a core memory think of the event and I erupt in a huge smile just thinking about it. Had my mother been home, we never would have had the fight. We eventually clued her in and it became a story in the “Follum” books.

Fast forward 35 years.

Flash forward some 35 years later, and my middle son and I are the only ones home! As he’s become a teenager, his go-to way of interacting with me (if he interacts at all) is to throw some kind of wrestling move on me. He’s bigger, faster, and way more powerful than I am.

We’re in the kitchen when he starts squirting me with a water-bottle fan. He’s being silly. He’s being engaged. He’s not locked in his room. I feign frustration at getting wet, and when he isn’t looking, I fill an entire glass of water. The second he turns toward me, I throw the whole thing at him—then take off running while he’s still in shock.

I fly up to the apartment over the garage and lock the door. He’s right on my heels. He tests the door, realizes it’s locked, and races to the garage to try another way in. I quickly find a lock on the inner bedroom door, and while he fiddles with it, I dash downstairs, lock him out of the house (at least through the garage), and run back to the safety of the apartment.

Game on. It’s officially war.

He quickly and quietly jumps the fence to the backyard and sneaks in through the porch. Then he creeps up to the door and begins trying to pick the lock. Neither of us makes a sound. I’m lying on my belly, watching his feet on the other side of the door, shaking with stifled laughter and tears. This goes on for at least 30 minutes.

Then my phone buzzes with a text:
“Mom—let me in the house. I’m at the front door.”

He doesn’t realize I can see his feet under the doorjamb. I stay silent and text back: “I opened that door long ago—I’m so sorry you’re still outside! I had no idea you hadn’t made it in yet.”

He keeps up his charade. I keep up mine.

The funny thing is, I know there’s no end to this war except me getting soaked.

Eventually, I unlock the door, hide behind it with a bucket of water (not glass this time), and wait. When he pushes the door open, I dump the bucket in his direction. Only half of it hits him, but it’s enough. He charges in and soaks me with a glass of water.

Puddles spread across the rug, the hardwood floors, and the walls. Our clothes are dripping. We laugh so hard my abs hurt and I can’t even talk.

He won the water war—but I won the teenage war.

With no one else around, I let go of my parental inhibitions and just played. I stopped the endless laundry and sat quietly on one side of a locked door, imagining how my son might remember this someday. I felt 13 again, climbing onto roofs and breaking little rules.

For over an hour, my 14-year-old and I were caught up in a battle of sneaking, belly laughs, and outsmarting each other. We broke the rules—and we made the memory.

Too often, teenagers grunt, roll their eyes, or choose friends and PlayStation over family time. Too often, I’m the annoying one. But every once in a while, a window opens—you get to pause everything else, climb out onto the roof, and make a memory strong enough to last through all the other stages.

Because in the end, it’s not the mess you’ll remember. It’s the joy.

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