Mom on the Run: Worn denim pants struggle to stay alive

I've just taken my son's jeans out of the dryer. I shake them out, stuff the front pockets back in, flip them over, and look at them thoughtfully.

With my finger I investigate the rip, the L-shaped tear along the top of the back right pocket. It looks like the corner caught on something -- a school chair? -- and the fabric finally gave out.

Really, I realize, this would be no big deal to repair. It's a smaller tear than I thought when my son first showed me. I had been warned by text message in advance: "the pockets of my jeans are falling off you can see my undies," and as I cooked dinner that night he came, turned around, lifted up his shirt, showed me the flap. It looked worse then, with a good-sized triangle of red underwear clearly showing.

And I talked up the effort to fix the jeans: "I don't know," I had said, shaking my head in exaggerated despair. "I'm going to have to sew the pocket half-shut to fix it. And that seam there, that's going to be hard to get through with a needle." My 13-year-old had looked pained, he craned around to try to get a better look himself, "But you're going to try, right?"

"Sure I'll try," I had said, emphasizing the "try," making it sound like Super Mom would move heaven and earth … but that some things, we all know, are just not possible. Tsk, tsk, what a shame.

And the reason for my hamming it up: I am sick to death of these jeans. He's got two identical pair that he wears constantly, dark wash with light distressing, a few factory-generated scratches and rips. "Wear some other jeans!" I beg him, regularly, routinely, and especially lately, after I happened to visit his closet and found, to my horror, a neat stack of four pair of brand-new jeans. "You've never worn these? Any of them? But you picked them out! You liked them!"

"They aren't comfortable," he said. "These are all broken in." And he'd pull them on again. The same two pair. Every day. With frequent washings, sure, but the same two pair, every day. Oh, it was infuriating. "Why'd I bother to buy all these, then?" But he just shook his head.

And now, finally, my chance! One pair of the favorite jeans, half of the annoying duo, is torn, ripped, possibly "irreparably!" At long last, months and months later, he's going to be forced to wear the others, the new jeans that took a whole painful shopping trip to find, that I spent money on, that I washed and folded in anticipation of use. Ha! The new jeans would be worn after all!

But now I'm standing here next to the dryer looking at the torn jeans, and really it's not that bad. The tear is much smaller than I thought, and since his shirts always hang down over his rear end, the scar of my stitching would be hidden. I'm thinking about this, assessing the repair job, because they are my son's favorite jeans, and because I'm thrifty enough that I hate the idea of throwing these away when really I can fix them, make them wearable again … even if that will send the like-new jeans back to the deep dark recesses of the closet again.

Argh! What to do, what to do? And as I stand and look, I realize: this isn't the only undie-showing hole. There, at the left side of the same pocket, the rivet there at the top: A good-size hole. It's big enough that I can almost stick the tip of my pinky finger in, and this hole, really will be hard to repair, I'll have to pull and pucker the edges ,and it will rip again and again.

Delighted, justified, I smile as I walk the jeans to the trash can, and happily wonder which of the closet jeans will become the new favorite pair.

Lianne Wilkens lives with her family in Manassas. She can be reached at liannewilkens@hotmail.com.