My greatest accomplishment - 10/2010

My greatest accomplishment - 10/2010

 

The kids get home from school around 3:15 or so by the time we roll into the driveway. They have about fifteen minutes before we must leave again to take Emma to swimming practice which starts at 4:00. 

At 3:30 I make the first announcement, shouting like a train conductor,“Ok its 3:30 lets go, we’re leaving in five minutes - shoes, jackets.” 

On this particular day I walk out to the car to get some of the school junk from the back seat, drawings, lunch bags, odds and ends left on the seat from the ride home from school. Eddie and John race out. “I’ll beat you,” Ed says. 

I notice Emma is coming out also, swim bag over her shoulder. “They’re fast today,” I think.

“Wait,” I shout, “Don’t shut the door.”

The door slams. It’s too late. My keys, to the car and to the house, are inside.

I try to think. I'm frozen.  “What can we do?” 

I look at the house. A minute passes. 

Finally I try the windows that are reachable from the deck. No dice – all are locked. I walk around the house, the side, front, the other side. I'm done for.

I spy the kitchen window, nine feet from ground level. I attempt to stand on the foundation ledge and push against the screen. It is a hard go. The ledge is slanted. My attempts to grab the sill don't work. Finally, in one motion, I spring onto the ledge and shove at the screen. The screen goes up. I push on the glass; the window goes up. Hallelujah! Finally an open window, but it is nine feet off the ground. 

 

I step back, look again. The kids are behind me, watching, fearful, hopeful.

I notice the hose spigot. I test its strength with my foot. It's fair. I put half my body weight on it, then step back to the ground. OK, now I coil like a shot-putter pushing off with one leg, the other leg on the spigot. Miraculously I am able to grab the sill of the nine foot high window, so in the same motion I continue pulling myself upward with two hands on the sill, like getting out of a pool. My head brushes the open sash as I try to force head and shoulders through the opening. I need to force myself inside more. I push down with my hands. My body raises slightly, extending a bit more of my torso into the kitchen, I try to straighten my arms for more leverage; they weaken. 

I am seventy-one years old. Did I mention that? 

Finally I collapse. With my legs still hanging outside, my ribs crash down onto the aluminum track of the screen. I hear a sharp snap and feel the tear in my rib cartilage. I let out a scream, then several more screams - louder.

“Are you OK?” the kids shout. The three of them are standing on the grass some ten feet below the window.

I keep screaming.

Again they ask, “Are you OK?”

“No,” I say.

 Inside the kitchen, my forehead rests on the sink. I give off a few more moans. I’ve done this rib cartilage thing before, each time thinking I must be more careful. But then I hadn’t counted on this situation. Slowly I pull myself onto the kitchen counter; my knees are in the sink. I lower my feet to the floor. The rib doesn’t feel so bad I think. I spy my keys on the table.

With keys in hand I head back out. “OK, let’s get in the car,” I announce. I am wobbling as I walk to the car, truly hurting, but – honestly - I am also extremely proud of my Spiderman wall scaling antics. 

“Are you OK?” Emma says again.

“Not really,” I say, but what I am thinking is that no one - not one person - in this whole world is going to appreciate what I have just done. I can tell them about it and they will likely respond that I should always keep my keys in my pocket – don’t lay them down in the house. There will not be one word about how utterly amazing that I - at age seventy-one  - could shimmy up a nine foot wall of house siding by merely stepping on a hose spigot and then - believe it or not – actually hoist my full body weight up and into and through the small window opening above the sink. All of this as the three children looked on in both horror, and perhaps awe, from below like creatures from the land of Lilliputians. I mean seriously! But that’s it. It’s over. There is no video. I should not have left my keys in the house.

As we go out the driveway I can’t resist asking, “Was that amazing? Or what?”

“Papa,” Eddie says.

“Yeah, what?” I’m waiting for a question like, “How did you fly all the way up there?” It must have looked amazing from their perspective, from so far below. 

Ed doesn’t respond.

“What, Ed?” I repeat.

“Why didn’t you use the ladder?”

“Huh?”