Fallen Angel

Last Monday, just as the macaroni and cheese finally reached its melty perfection, my youngest daughter tumbled down the stairs. It sounded much like you would imagine it sounding, sort of an unusual bumpity noise, followed by a cement bag-like smack hitting the ground. And then a pause, an unnatural quiet. Then followed by howling, screams exhaled from the diaphragm, a deluge of salty tears, and lung filled sobs. My husband and I were in the kitchen, he complaining about his day and pouring some wine while I stirred and mixed and set out plates and filled glasses. Minutes before, we called our girls to dinner. One remained safely in the bathroom while the other heeded our call too rapidly and was now a crumpled pile at the bottom of the stairs.

She looked much like she did as a toddler, only with the legs of a supermodel, all gangly and long and jutting. She is past the age where she is easily scooped up and carried from one room to the other; now bending from the knees, not the waist, is the key to successful hoisting. But hoist we did, since we didn’t yet know the extent of the damage. We waddled our way to the sectional sofa, propped up her foot, and soothed her tears. I wrapped an ice pack in a dish towel and brought it to her. She calmed down enough to let us know her head was fine, and her pain was limited to below her knee on her left foot, the epicenter being her left ankle. No significant swelling. No bone protruding from flesh. No shade of purple blooming on pale skin.

“She’s fine,” my husband declared. “Let’s eat.” “Don’t you think we should take her to the ER and get it X-rayed?” I asked. “Can I eat dinner here on the couch?” my daughter asked me innocently through a veil of tiny tears. I got out her Dora the Explorer television tray and brought a plate of macaroni and cheese and chunks of fruit and plastic cup of ice water to her.

I had reason to believe we needed to get that leg checked out by a medical doctor and not just our family dentist, who was even more ready for that glass of wine he poured. My sister C had a broken leg when she was a little girl. She was about 5 and ¾, which in my memory was more like 5 and six dimes, but I was only three and had not yet learned about fractions or money. As the story goes, she and my other sister, L, were playing outside on Christmas Eve, while I was being forced to take a nap. They were hanging out on the picnic table, one of those allegedly redwood jobs with the benches. L demonstrated how she was able to walk from the table to the bench without falling. C attempted to do it too. She missed, however, and her leg went between the table and the bench. The rest of the story gets a little sketchy from here, only because I was young and it didn’t happen to me, so I am not one hundred percent how events unfolded. My mother took C to the emergency room, where her leg was X-rayed, inconclusively. The ER doctor, who probably had young children of his own that he resented for some reason, advised my mother that my sister was faking it and to make her walk. So what started as a hairline fracture on Christmas Eve turned into a compound fracture the following day. Merry Christmas! My sister spent the next six weeks in traction at a children’s hospital, becoming very familiar with bedpans and an assortment of games without dice and puzzles missing pieces. My other sister, L, and I were not allowed to visit her, which makes no sense since she was in a children’s hospital and we were also children. I didn’t know any of this at the time. I was three, after all. I just assumed she was never coming home because the house was dark a lot and we stopped eating dinner together.

I didn’t want to be the mom who made my kid walk on her broken leg until it went from a little broken to a lot broken. I also didn’t want to be the Munchausen by proxy mom, running to the emergency room every time my klutzy kid takes a header. So I did nothing. Well, I did ice and Motrin, and coddling and constant “Are you okay?” checks. But no lengthy trips to the hospital. No after hours calls to the pediatrician. Just a little TLC and a lot of self doubt.

One week later, she is fine, and I am not my mother. Thank God for both.