*whew!* and WOW!

For his 12th birthday, William's Aunt Cara and Uncle Colin had sent him new bedding for his birthday, stars and galaxies, deep swirls of blue and gray, with constellations printed out. The stars glow in the dark. Very cool and he loves it. 

On the list of things to do, we needed to find a new rug to match his new bedroom things.  William had an appointment. I had a few errands to run so we left a bit early. We were in a store that had a large pile of carpets. He saw a huge fluffy white one. He stretched across it with a rapturous look on his face. "This is great!" he said. 

White!

We once had a white rug in the livingroom. We put it down and it looked very nice. For a few hours. One small boy managed to get spaghetti sauce on it on the very same day that we got it.  Scrub as I might, that stain remained and ultimately the rug was retired to one of the upstairs bedrooms where the stain could be hidden beneath a piece of furniture.  

That boy is older and taller now, But  a white rug? For William? My god. I was having flashbacks.

I tried to be gentle about it. "White rugs stain very easily. What if your shoes were dirty..." 

"We don't wear shoes in the house."

"Well, if something got spilled..." 

"I don't eat in my bedroom. Sometimes I have a Sprite. Noah and I had snacks. But I don't really eat in my bedroom." We stood staring at each other across that pile of carpets. 

I stood there trying to think of reasons to justify not getting a white rug. He stood there, rubbing his hands across it in a dreamy way. 

"I just don't think," I started and suddenly his face changed. 

"Wait....wait....wait a minute...." He had caught a glimpse of a rug further down in the pile. It was a dark denim blue fluffy rug that appeared to change color when you saw it from different vantage points. Dark gray, almost black, to a dark indigo blue. He ran his hands across it and watched the effect. "This is it, he said firmly. "It matches perfectly." 

I agreed that it was a perfect match. 

It was also on sale for $20 less than the marked price. 

And, most importantly, it was not white. 

We headed to the register with our purchase. William was very excited. I was ridiculously relieved. 

On a completely unrelated note:  Last night, Tim and I managed to get half way through 'Remember This, a one man performance piece by David Strathairn. Tim cannot do late nights at the moment, and I have to get a young man off to school in the mornings. We hated to turn it off. What a powerful piece. As usual, I was googling on my phone as we watched it, and found the book, written by Jan Karski. I showed it to Tim, saying "this is a book worth having." He told me to order it, but I'm the sort that does nothing without comparing prices. I told him that I'd look around the following day. We woke up this morning and the first words out of Tim's mouth were, "You need to find that book." Powerful, powerful stuff. 

If you get a chance to see it, you should. If not, get the book. It should be required reading/viewing for every high school student. 

But of course it won't be.