Episode 3: So Clumsy...
Flashback: November 2018
It was already dark when Emma & I picked up Sia & Brooke. The three girls were attending a small group Bible study, and I was driving west, down 460, toward Roanoke. I put my phone in the console of my truck, and when I stopped at a stoplight, I could see that an email had come through. I pulled through the intersection, but the bright white text—HELP—caused me to pull over.
My parents’ house sits on about 30 acres in Appomattox County—over an hours’ drive from where I live. It was built around 80 years ago, and then remodeled and added onto about 50 years ago. The basement, though, was never designed for much more than holding up the rest of the house—one old cement box. The washer and dryer were down there, too.
Truth be told, no one has ever accused my mother of being graceful. In fact, my grandmother would whisper her gentle invective “so clumsy” whenever young Carolyn would fall off something, or when she would just fall over.
The wooden steps that led down to the washer and dryer, unfortunately, were about as stable as my mother’s coordination. So, when she went down to put a basket of dirty clothes into the washing machine, finding herself sprawled on the concrete floor wasn’t so much of a surprise as it was a shock. She looked around for the basket or for the clothes that would remain unwashed for a few days.
The stairs, reaching up to the main floor of the house, rocked with laughter at her continued difficulties with gravity.
And, no, her ankle shouldn’t look like that.
She needed help.
Why would she need her phone down in the basement? Come to think of it, where is that phone?
She crawled on her hands and knees up the stairs, into the kitchen. No phone. Down the hall, and into the den. Still, no phone. Back into the bedroom? No phone. But an iPad. A dead iPad. She plugged it in and waited until the black screen exhaled with light.
She emailed as many of us as she could: Help.
When my father got back from the hospital, where my mother stayed a few days to recover from the surgery to put her bones back together and stitch everything up, he was horrified by the amount of blood all through the house.
The washer and dryer were moved to the back porch. The basement stairs were rebuilt, though my mother doesn’t go down there anymore. She avoids stairs, if she can. Sure, she’s clumsy, but she grew up in a ranch home in Texas. With no stairs. Come to think of it, that’s the same home where Mallory lived, right before she moved to Virginia.
