How Mum and Dad Got Tangled Up in an Enormous Knot

Once upon a time there was a family. Mum, Dad and three children: four-year-old Hugo, six-year-old Ema and eight-year-old Robin.

They lived in a house where something was always going on and something was nearly always being looked for.

Usually socks.

After socks came hoodies and crayons.

Once Ema spent so long looking for her red crayon that she decided to draw a poster: CRAYON MISSING.

With the red crayon she had been holding the whole time.

And Robin insisted that socks must disappear into a secret world behind the washing machine. How else could exactly one sock always go missing from every pair?

Mum was often dashing from one child to the next.

“Hugo, where are your shoes?”

“Ema, we wipe up tea with a cloth, not with our sleeve.”

“Robin, please take your backpack.”

“And no, Hugo, the cuddly crocodile really can’t go to nursery today.”

Some days her head felt like a pressure cooker.

One more “Mummyyy!” and you could almost hear it:

Psssssssh!

Dad, meanwhile, often had so many things in his head that it was as if a hundred computer programs were running in there at once. Work, shopping, phone calls, an unpaid bill, a dripping tap.

And just when he remembered something important, someone would ask him whether worms have bottoms.

Mum and Dad were both tired. They both loved the children very much. But lately they had not been able to agree about one thing, and it was something to do with the children.

Each of them thought they knew what would be best.

And the harder they tried to convince each other, the less they listened.

One evening they had a row.

At first they spoke quietly. Then louder. And in the end so loudly that there was no pretending nobody could hear them.

Hugo stopped building his tower. He stayed sitting on the carpet with a blue brick in his hand.

Ema curled up in the corner of the sofa and hugged a cushion to her tummy.

Robin was looking at his book, but he wasn’t reading. He was listening to every word.

And then Dad, in a temper, said:

“Well, maybe I’d better just leave!”

Hugo’s tummy felt funny:

Gloop.

Ema thought: Is it because of us?

And questions Robin did not want at all began racing through his head.

Will he really leave? Where will he go? And will he come back?

His parents kept on talking. At first nobody noticed how quiet the children had gone.

Just then the doorbell rang.

Brrrring!

Dad went to open the door.

On the doorstep stood a small man in overalls. In one hand he held a battered toolbox, and on his head he wore an orange helmet so big that it nearly covered his eyebrows.

On the helmet it said:

FAMILY KNOT REPAIRMAN

“Good evening,” he said. “I’ve come about the tangle.”

Dad frowned.

“We didn’t call anyone.”

“That’s what nearly everyone says.”

The man took a small device with a needle out of his pocket.

Beep.

Beep.

BEEEEP!

The needle shot right up into the red.

“Aha,” said the repairman. “That’ll be a bigger knot, then. It was beeping at me from the corner of the street.”

Mum came to the door. Ema peeped out from behind her, with Hugo just below. Robin stood where he could get a good view of the device.

“What does it measure?” he asked.

“Tangled things you can’t see. Worries nobody has said out loud, words that went unheard and words that flew out of someone’s mouth faster than they should have.”

The repairman pushed back his helmet.

“May I come in? I find it hard to untangle things in a draught.”

In the living room he put his toolbox on the floor and opened it. Out of it he pulled a long rope, tangled into a horrible clump.

It looked like spaghetti that a vacuum cleaner had tried to comb.

“What’s that?” breathed Ema.

“Your row from this evening.”

Hugo’s eyes went wide.

“That big?”

“Well, a lot of hard work went into it.”

The repairman sat down on the carpet and began pointing out the knots one by one.

“Here we have: ‘You never listen to me.’ And next to it: ‘And you don’t understand me either.’”

He turned the rope over.

“Here’s a nice tight ‘Always’. And just below it a double ‘Never’. Those two do love to stick together.”

The corners of Robin’s mouth twitched a little.

Then he pointed to the middle of the clump.

“And the biggest one?”

The repairman stopped turning the rope.

“That one is made of the words about leaving.”

For a moment the room was quiet.

“Sometimes, in a row, grown-ups say something that really frightens other people,” the repairman went on. “And then children don’t know what will happen next.”

Robin dropped his gaze to the carpet. Ema nodded.

Hugo looked at Dad.

“Are you moving out?”

Dad crouched down beside him at once.

“No, Hugo. I don’t want to move out.”

Mum sat down next to Ema and reached out a hand to Robin.

Meanwhile the repairman rummaged in his toolbox and pulled out an enormous rubber stamp. He laid a sheet of paper on the floor.

THUMP!

CHILDREN ARE NOT TO BLAME FOR GROWN-UPS’ ROWS.

“We’ll leave this here,” he said.

Hugo inspected the stamp.

“Have you got one for socks as well?”

“Socks are a different department. It’s much more complicated there.”

Ema looked at the tangled rope.

“So who’s going to untangle it, then?”

The repairman nodded towards the parents.

“Mum and Dad. And if they can’t manage, they can ask for help.”

He handed Mum one end of the rope and Dad the other.

“Off you go.”

Mum pulled. So did Dad.

The knot only got tighter.

“Excellent!” cried the repairman. “That’s the demonstration of how not to do it out of the way.”

Hugo giggled.

“Now both of you try loosening it a little.”

Mum let the rope go slack. Dad did the same. A tiny gap appeared between the tight loops.

“There we are,” said the repairman. “Already much easier to make sense of.”

Mum gazed at the rope for a while.

“I’ve been terribly tired lately,” she said at last. “And when all I hear is what I’ve done wrong, it feels as if nobody sees everything else.”

Dad took a breath, as if he wanted to answer straight away.

But then he stopped himself and let her finish.

One little knot came loose.

“I’m tired too,” he said. “And sometimes I look for what needs fixing instead of noticing everything you’ve already managed.”

Mum nodded.

“And then I start shouting. But we can’t hear each other over the shouting anyway.”

Another loop came free.

The repairman gave a satisfied grunt.

“Now it looks more like a rope and less like a lunch that’s had an accident.”

But in the middle there was still a big, tightly pulled knot.

Dad looked at it for a long time. Then he sat down next to the children.

“I’m sorry I frightened you with what I said about leaving. I was angry, but I shouldn’t have said that.”

Robin finally lifted his head.

“So you don’t want to go away from us?”

“I don’t. I love you. And Mum too. There’s one thing we can’t agree on at the moment, but we have to sort it out together.”

“And I’m sorry I shouted,” Mum added. “That wasn’t all right.”

Ema ran her finger along the seam of the cushion.

“So we don’t have to do anything about it?”

“No, you don’t,” said Mum.

“Not even be extra specially good so you won’t argue any more?”

Mum hugged her.

“Not even that. How we talk to each other is our responsibility. You don’t have to earn our love by being perfect.”

The repairman raised a finger.

“Exactly. Children aren’t glue for their parents.”

Hugo burst out laughing.

“I’m not glue!”

“You certainly aren’t.”

“Not even Sellotape?”

“Not even Sellotape.”

Hugo thought about it.

“What about superglue?”

“Definitely not that. Besides, it’s awfully hard to get off your fingers.”

Now Mum and Dad smiled too.

Slowly the big knot loosened. There was still one loop to pull out, another to thread through and a third to nudge along a little.

Then the rope lay loose on the carpet.

“Done?” asked Robin.

“We’ve done a good bit of work for today,” the repairman replied. “But Mum and Dad will still need to have a calm talk about what they were arguing about.”

He began packing his tools back into the toolbox.

“And you can say when something is bothering you. For example: ‘I didn’t like it when you shouted at each other.’ Or: ‘I was scared you were going to leave.’”

“Or that my tummy hurts?” asked Hugo.

“That too. And you can also just say: ‘I need a hug.’”

Ema finally put down her cushion.

“Even when the row is over?”

“Of course. Fear doesn’t always go away at the exact moment the voices in the room go quiet.”

The repairman snapped his toolbox shut and put on his helmet. Once again it slid almost down to his nose.

Hugo tilted his head.

“And what is a family made of?”

The repairman thought about it.

“Of people who belong together. Of love, things you’ve done together, a bit of chaos and usually a heap of dirty socks.”

“And Lego,” added Robin.

The repairman flinched.

“Yes. Lego too. Especially that one brick you tread on in your bare feet.”

Hugo quietly picked up the blue brick from the carpet and put it away in the box.

Just in case.

Then the repairman said goodbye and left. Behind him on the table lay one stamped sheet of paper.

That evening, not everything was magically mended. Mum and Dad still disagreed about something. But they agreed to talk about it calmly later.

Hugo finished his tower. Ema fetched her crayons. And Robin went back to his book. This time he really was reading.

And whenever that horrible gloop came back in their tummies, they knew who to go to.

“My knot’s got a bit tangled again,” said Ema.

“Come here,” said Mum. “We’ll untangle this one together.”

The End.