To hold the fort: o que isso significa?

Imagine you're the oldest of your three little brothers. One day, your mother needs to go to the supermarket and leaves you in charge of the your all younger brothers. Here's what she says: I need you to stay here and hold the fort while I'm away grocery shopping, and when I come back I want everything the way I left. You think as a child yourself, that's a lot of responsibility, but still you accept the challenge and everything turns out fine in the end. But wait, what does hold the fort mean?

When you leave someone holding the fort for you, you leave the place you're usually in for a few moments and count on someone else to take care of the things for you. That usually happens at a store when a seller needs to leave the store for any reason and his coworker has to be in charge of all his work while he's gone. As our example suggested, at home there's also a lot of responsibilities that could be taken upon by a lot of people while the one who's usually in charge of them is gone. That's all for today. Take care!