thoughts, words, deeds

I probably should have told . . .

Talk Tuesday! Ever thought there was something going on in your life that you should've talked to your parents about, but didn't? Only to realize...you maybe should've, and it wouldn't have been a big deal in the first place?

This one is complicated. I’m sure there were times (and there are times) that I haven’t talked to my parents about some emotional something or some financial something. Generally, it’s because I shouldn’t have talked to them about it. I was always pretty good about talking over the big things with them. So, I don’t have any major emotional events to share.

But I didn’t like to get into trouble, and so there were a couple of times I can remember when I didn’t tell about something when I should have. Both major times I remember, it involved me getting hurt.

First, when I was five or so, my parents bought their first house. It was in Connecticut and had two stories with a long hill of a driveway and a deck/balcony out back with arcadia doors and steps down to the ground. We lived here from ages five to eight (and I’m the oldest), which means I had two younger sisters when I got there and a brother who came while we lived there, all under eight.

There’s something fascinating about stairs and rails and the outside of rails, especially to young children. So, my parents put chicken wire up around the deck to keep us off it so we didn’t fall off. Do you remember that scene from the beginning of one of the old superman movies when Clark and Lois are at Niagara Falls and an idiot kid is on the outside of the rail, switching hands?

Well, I think I was doing something like that when I fell. I landed on the grass, and got up, hurting a bit, but not broken or bleeding, so I decided that I needed to keep quiet so I didn’t get into trouble. I don’t actually remember the rationalization process. Maybe I thought that they already knew by some parental radar and so I shouldn’t need to tell them.

Two weeks later, Mama asks why I’m walking funny, and I say that my back hurts, and she asks why, and I say something like from when I fell off the deck. She asks when, and I say a couple of weeks ago.

Fast forward in time. I’m eleven or twelve and we live in New York. I have three sisters, now (and the brother), the youngest of which is two or three and playing outside, probably without her shoes on. This is important. Remember the lack of shoes. I am just finished walking the dog and go inside. We have a door with glass panes on the top half. Instead of shutting the door by the wood, I use the pane. I don’t punch it or anything, I just push it, and push through it and suddenly we have a door with eight instead of nine panes and broken glass.

I look at my left hand. I can tell I have some little cuts on my wrist (and up the pinky side) but they aren’t bleeding bad. My sister is outside. Remember the shoes? She’s going to come running in and cut herself on the glass. I have to clean it up.

I go to the bathroom but can’t find the bandaids. I wad up some toilet tissue and put it over my wrist. Mama comes downstairs. She’s about to take a bath. I put my hands behind my back and talk to her for a couple minutes, applying direct pressure to my wrist with its wadded toilet tissue bandage. She goes in and runs the bath water. I go and clear up the glass and throw it away.

At this point, I look at my wrist. It’s started bleeding. I apply direct pressure. Doesn’t help. I need something better than the tissue. I know that. I go and knock on the door to the bathroom where Mama is taking her bath. “Mama, do you know where the bandaids are? I can’t get my wrist to stop bleeding.”

In less time than it takes to write this, Mama is out of the tub and decent enough to unlock the door and take a look at my wrist. I explain, “I broke the window in the door. But I cleaned up the glass so the baby will be all right.”

My poor mother. She says that if I’d told her before, either time, it would have been the hospital.

I don’t terribly like going to hospital, by the way. So, I'm glad I didn't go. But I probably should have told.