Tales From the Burning Prairie

There are no stairs in my house, this is by design. Not that we designed a house with no stairs, but we ruled out houses that had more than a single level. Even a couple of steps can lead to trouble, you see, I am a faller. I fall with great frequency and panache. If falling was an Olympic event, I’d win the gold medal.

You could call it many things: clumsiness, lack of coordination, accident-prone, two left feet, fumble-fingered, all thumbs. But I prefer to call myself gracefulness-challenged. I was diagnosed early, at about the second time I fell and split my head open. I don’t remember them, but apparently I fell in ways that no one ever had before and that would be impossible to recreate in the future. I like to think of it as style.

My parents and teachers tried their best to help me. Mom and Dad got me a big chalkboard so I could practice holding chalk and drawing circles without injuring myself and others. Dad built a balance beam in the backyard so I could learn to put one foot in front of the other instead of getting them tangled up all the time. At school, I was enrolled in something called “High Challenge”, which was like remedial walking. They tried their best, really they did, bless their hearts. But all their efforts were for nothing, I remain an accident waiting to happen.

To catalog all my many falls would be impossible, or at least unbelievable, but here are some highlights. Childhood-fell out of tree (broken arm), fell out of bunk bed (broken collar bone). Adulthood-falling down stairs at apartment (twisted ankle), falling down stairs of next apartment (more embarrassed than anything, as our downstairs neighbor, Underpants Man, opened his door just as I reached the bottom), falling backward down front steps of next apartment (nearly die of humiliation when horrified neighbors rush to help me).

The next apartment seemed to usher in a time of relative peace. I began to believe that maybe, just maybe, I was growing out of that phase. Some minor things cropped up, like the time I slammed my thumb in the vault door at the bank or the time my left hand swelled up like a puffer fish and my wedding ring had to be cut off in the E.R. But I wasn’t falling anymore. I shouldn’t have gotten smug.

The next several years passed quietly as we brought our first baby into our family and prepared for our second one. Then, the falling started again. While hugely pregnant with our second, I fell off the single step in our house (the one in the garage by the washing machine) and out of my shoes. I managed to break the fall, the baby never felt a thing, but I ripped a ligament in my foot.

Then potty training for the oldest began and I found myself sprinting to public restrooms, toddler in tow. One such time in the grocery store, Mr. I-need-to-go-to-the-potty-RIGHT-NOW! decided he wasn’t going to be doing any of that walking nonsense and wrapped himself around my legs. I didn’t even have time to yell “timber!” before I was felled. I tried to grab him to break his fall and forgot about breaking my own. That was O.K., the right side of my body and head broke my fall (bursitis, lower back pain, fierce headache, and bent glasses). I spent six weeks in physical therapy. About two weeks after that, Mr. I-don’t-want-to-walk-to-the-potty! pulled the same stunt again! This time I remembered to break my fall with my hands and not my head. But my right hip is not my friend anymore, and my lower back is mad at me.

My most recent feat of unrivaled gracelessness was painfully public as well as just painful. I walk my oldest to Pre-K every day, pushing the youngest in her stroller. The school is on a small hill, there is no ramp and I haul the stroller up the stairs, backwards. If you think this sounds like a recipe for disaster, you’d be right. One day, after hauling the stroller up the stairs, I tried to turn it around to roll it forward. And stepped off the walk and almost tumbled right down the hill. I broke the fall this time with my right knee and would’ve wailed with the pain but dozens of other parents and children had witnessed my shame. Well, I managed to get the oldest into class and limp my way home with the youngest in the stroller who, to judge by her giggling, was having the time of her life. So now my knee is not too happy with me, either.

My poor husband, he has been the primary witness for most of my mishaps; and he has to wonder what kind of klutz he married. He’s seen so many of these humiliating incidents, but they still alarm him, far more than me. When I fell in the garage he made me throw away the shoes I fell off of, but it didn’t help. You see, I know the truth, it’s not the shoes, it’s the little traitors stuffed into them. My feet, I think they’re cursed. Not that I believe in curses or anything.

Addendum: My two-year old daughter has just won the gold medal in Olympic Falling. Friday afternoon, Pumpkin (who has an in-toeing problem) tripped over her own foot, struck Monkey’s chair with her head, and had to get three stitches. She is fine and healing nicely; my nerves are shot.

First, let me just say that I do not believe in ghosts. Surely after someone passes away, he or she has better things to do than hang around in my kitchen. That said, some weird things are going on in my house.

The house was built in 1955, not very old by haunted house standards. Not that I believe in ghosts, mind you. From the day we moved in to this very day, we’ve heard our ghost in the kitchen, but never while we’re in there. We’ll hear the noises when we’re sitting at the dining table or watching TV in the den. At first, we’d run into the kitchen trying to find the source of the noises, but all we could do was rule out from where they might be coming. The noises aren’t coming from the stove, dishwasher, or refrigerator; we’ve never been able to find what is causing them. So, now we just smile and say, “Kitchen ghost!”

My husband and I have also seen some things that are rather odd. No ectoplasm, no floating furniture, nothing “Ghostbusters” or anything, just odd. Like things seen out of the corner of the eye, when you think someone is standing right there and you turn to look and no one is there. More times than I can count, I’ll see movement and think Hubby has poked his head into the room but he will be back in the bedroom and the kids will be sound asleep. He has the same experiences and thinks that I am looking in on him. Not that we believe in ghosts, or anything.

I don’t scare easily and I’m not superstitious; and I’m not going to go all New-Agey and start yelling “Go to the light!” If my ghost wants to stick around it’s ok by me, after all it’s “lived” here longer than we have. But I did have to have a talk with the ghost the other day about some things that have happened recently. Not that I believe in ghosts, however. One night while I was getting new school clothes ready for the laundry, something came into the den. I was standing facing the fireplace when a little white column of vapor floated in front of me. I saw it enter the den through the doorway, float in column form to a stop right in front of me. The base of the column was wispy and hovered above the floor about 6 inches; the top was rounder and “stood” about 4 feet tall. It stayed stationary in front of me, and as I stared in surprise, just vanished gently away. I shrugged and said aloud, “Huh, the ghost is pretty active tonight.” Told you, I don’t scare easily.
The very next day, after my husband left for work, something else happened. Every morning I iron a shirt for him then put the iron on a silicone hot pad on the kitchen counter facing the wall so I don’t accidentally get burned, then I lock the baby gate behind me when I leave. Hubby had already left for work and the kids and I were watching “Yogi Bear” when I heard a noise in the kitchen. Just a small thud, no loud clattering, no crashing. Both kids were with me, so I didn’t worry too much. Later, I walked into the kitchen for a drink and found my iron face-down on the floor. Now, I had set the iron firmly on the counter away from the edge and a drawer was open right under the spot. To fall to the floor, the iron would’ve had to bounce off the open drawer, making a terrible noise all the way down. But that’s not what happened. The iron looked for all the world like it had been set on the floor. While it was still warm, no less. It stuck to the linoleum when I picked it up, luckily the floor wasn’t damaged. I called my husband to confirm that he hadn’t knocked it the floor, he hadn’t.

At that point I decided it was time to have a talk with the ghost, that I don’t believe in by the way. So I talked directly to my ghost. I told him he was welcome to stay (does he or she even have meaning when discussing ghosts?), after all, he had been here longer than we had, I wouldn’t try to make him go to the light, but please, just don’t scare the children.

This is not going to set me off on some mad search to “find” my ghost; I will NOT be having any seances and I don’t own a Ouija board. To me, having a ghost is part of the charm of living in a 50-year old house. Which is totally beside the point, as I don’t believe in ghosts. Oddly enough, I have noticed less activity and fewer noises since my talk with our “ghost”, but I kind of miss him. Especially this close to Halloween.

Not that I believe in ghosts.

Somewhere, somewhen she had lost herself. Maybe her self was swimming around with the junk at the bottom of the diaper bag, maybe it floated away on the echo of one of the many times she yelled at her children, maybe it could be found again someday, maybe not. She loved them, she really did, with a fierce love that she feared would burn a hole right through her chest. So where did this smoldering pit of anger come from? Everyday she tried to douse it, and everyday fresh, dry kindling was thrown on top.

She had waited so long for them, had gone through all the tests, the procedures, the drugs. She hadn’t even minded all the usual miseries of pregnancy. But.
But she hadn’t been exactly a young mother when they were born. She had 36 years all to herself, well, a decade of that with her husband. They were both quiet people, homebodies by nature. It was a comfortable life, with little conflict. They had worked out their differences years ago; all the rough edges had been worn clean. As with all long-marrieds, they had a short-hand of conversation, a repertoire of very inside jokes. A look or a raised eyebrow applied at the right moment could trigger fits of laughter. They were so content, wouldn’t a child fit seamlessly into their lives?
But no one had been there to tell her that her dreamy, foggy visions of motherhood were setting her up for failure. But if someone had told her that reality could never live up to her expectations, would she have even listened? Maybe she would have dismissed their warnings with an imperious wave of her hand, arrogant and confident that life would magically shape itself to her plans.
But she had no idea how very much she would miss her previous quiet life. It wasn’t so much child-noise that bothered her, it was talking all day, answering the same questions over and over, guiding and correcting constantly, reaching her limit and shreiking like a mad-woman. For a time, she and he lived somewhere else; she didn’t know anyone, not even their new neighbors. There were days when she would say ‘goodbye’ to her husband at the train in the morning and ‘hello’ to him when she picked him up in the evening and not utter one word in between. Not even to herself, not even to the cat. It was this blessed silence she missed, her own silence, the lack of her own voice, the prominence of her thoughts in such stillness.
But now there were new conflicts between them. There were no smooth, seamless transitions. Maybe the rough edges had always been there, only lying dormant. Tectonic plates in the stillness between quakes, pushed into renewed activity with the expansion of their family.
But she knew she suffered through some kind of post-partum something after each baby. What good could that information do her now, where was she supposed to go with that? They were far too old for anything post-partum to be tearing her to pieces right now.
The anger was there, it was a fact to be dealt with, a struggle to surmount. Maybe the largest portion of the problem should be laid properly at her own feet. She craved silence like a drug, but needed to talk with another adult. When he came home in the evenings, she couldn’t stop herself from peppering him with all that had been on her mind all day. And as deeply and painfully as she loved her children, sometimes she thought she would cry if she heard her name one more time. Maybe it was because her name was no longer her own, it had been replaced by Mama.
Or maybe it was because she was just one bad mother.