Once upon a time there was a woman who, for today’s purposes, we will simply call Momma. Momma had three children, the oldest of which was in 1st grade and therefore typically not home during the weekdays. The younger two, a boy and a girl, were 18mo and 3yo respectively. This story concerns the two of them so let’s take a moment to meet them.
Ethan was a stocky, rosy-cheeked little guy, with gobs of curly brown hair, twinkling brown eyes and a great, big smile that almost never left his face. He had chubby hands, fat little feet and eight perfect little teeth. He was a Holy Terror. He loved to climb on, well, anything. As the youngest, and the only boy at that, his was the privileged position of “The Baby”. The Baby was doted on by everyone, especially his sisters and it is very likely that his complete lack of fear came from his general sense of security in his surroundings.
Abigail was a tiny little whiplash of a girl. She had straight blond hair, cut short on one side and left in a bob on the other (the result of Momma trying to fix her attempt at cutting her own hair). The affect was pixie-like, in every way. Not only was she a pretty little thing, but she was spunky and mischievous. Truly, had the haircut been carefully thought out it couldn’t have suited her personality better. She was very small for her age, but perfectly proportioned and, like her brother, never stopped moving. Flamboyant and passionate, her pink smile easy to find and her brown eyes a total give-away to what she was thinking, Abigail was a force of nature compacted into a tiny, bird-like little package. She could be counted upon to shout most of the the things she said and she was Exhausting.
Unbeknown to Momma, the two of these children had devised a plan to drive all semblance of sanity from her before her 31st birthday. They were succeeding.
There came a day in February when it was unseasonably warm. It seemed the first vestiges of spring were making themselves known and Momma decided to take full advantage of the lovely weather. It had come at a perfect time as Momma was planning a dinner party the next evening and wanted to clean the house. She opened every window in the house, including the great bay windows in the living room and in her bedroom, the former being on the first floor and the latter, on the second. Having only purchased the house a little more than a month previously, she’d never had the opportunity to relish the free-flowing breezes afforded by the big windows. Momma adored sunlight and a cross-breeze will find no comparison for freshening up a house.
The house wasn’t a big one but it was quite full as it housed five people, two cats, a dog and a rabbit. One the first floor one would come in through the front door into the living room, adjacent to which was a half bath. Continuing towards the back of the house, one would find the kitchen which had a nice open floor-plan. Off the kitchen was the addition. Originally it had been the back porch but Momma was thoroughly grateful the previous owner had seen fit to have it made into a dining room. At the back of the kitchen was the staircase that led up to the 2nd floor. Momma was spending a great deal of time at the top of it on this day, as one of the big projects she was working on was the laundry and her washer/dryer combo was at the top of the stairs. At the front of the house were the children’s rooms, across from the steps the full bath and at the back of the house, above the kitchen, was her bedroom which seconded as Daddy’s office. The beloved bay windows in the room overlooked the roof of the dining room and the back-yard.
It was while Momma was folding what felt like the 10th load of laundry that day that Abigail asked, ever so sweetly, if she could please play games on Daddy’s computer. Permission was granted, so long as Abigail kept the door closed as Ethan liked to pull things like the router and modem off of the desk and that wreaked havoc with the network which, in turn, drove Daddy bonkers. Not only that the two of them together in that room would spell disaster for it’s relative neatness in a matter of minutes and Momma had enough to do without that added complication.
Shortly after granting permission for Abigail to use her room, Momma was distracted by Ethan, who had woken from his nap. After changing him and turning him loose, she returned to folding the laundry while chatting with a friend on the phone. As she was keeping an ear out for her son’s doings, she noticed when he found the cat-dish and could hear him busily spreading it’s contents across the table. She chose this moment to use the bathroom as, while he was surely making a mess, she knew where he was and what he was doing and felt it was a safe time to do so. The friend on the phone was an old friend and wouldn’t mind anyway. Momma had lots of practice using the bathroom in under two minutes because really, toddlers can accomplish a lot when unsupervised, in that amount of time.
So it was with some annoyance that she answered the door to the shouting of Abigail, having scarcely concluded her business, maybe a minute and a half later. As she was on the phone, it didn’t register immediately that Abby wasn’t just shouting as usual, but was actually near hysterics. Momma ripped the door open and rather rudely demanded “Abigail, what on earth is your problem?” and glanced towards her open bedroom door, thinking to reprimand her for leaving it open- and for a split second, time stopped.
There, on the wrong side of the window stood her son, some 15ft off the ground, banging on the screen and, Momma thought, crying. Abigail’s shrieks belatedly registered as panic and the only words Momma made out were “My baby brother fell out the window!”.
Allow us to pause and explain that Momma’s bed was located under the previously mentioned bay window. The window’s panes slid open towards the center and the two outer panes had separate screens. It appeared as though The Baby had pushed the screen out on one side, climbed out the window (or fell, according to Abby) and had simply walked across the roof to the other side.
In the moment, though, none of this really registered in Momma’s mind. She shrieked “Oh My God!” and was out the window, across the roof and back in with her laughing son before she even had time to think about it. In a daze, she set her son on the floor, turned, firmly shut and locked the window and weakly sat on the bed. Ethan pointed to the window and chattered away, laughing and squealing as he did so. Abigail sobbed that she was sorry she left the door open (thought Momma could have sworn it was shut when she went into the bathroom).
Momma was horrified. She had instructed that the door remained closed out of concern for the well being of her husband’s equipment. The bay windows never even occurred to her as she’d never had cause to open them before. She marveled a moment at how Mr. Stubby Legs had managed to get up the stairs, onto the bed and out the bloody window in the time it took her to pee before realizing that she’d thrown the phone across the room, shrieking like a banshee.
Hands shaking, she found it, unharmed and was surprised to find her friend still waiting on the other line. Herding her son and her daughter out of the room (and locking the door behind her) she related her tale and told her friend, ”I need a drink”.
This is the story of how my weekend began. This happened Thursday afternoon, before Abigail came down with a stomach bug that kept her up all night and was passed around my entire family, with my poor husband finally coming down with it today. I actually started writing this yesterday!
How was YOUR weekend?
