there have been precious few times when i have been afraid. when a 14 hand thoroughbred stepped on my back, when i left the country for the first time... but, tonight, i was truly frightened. let me tell you why.
i went to my grandmother's around 6 for dinner. she lost her husband about six weeks ago, so we've all been a little more deferential than usual. anyway, she wanted to cook dinner for me & my parents. we get to the house, and everything is going pretty normally. she's in the kitchen yelling at the pot to boil more quickly.
then, suddenly, we hear a loud crash.
my mother goes into the kitchen calling, "ma! mom!" without any reply. we can't see her but we can hear her. not finding her anywhere, we open the cellar door. there she is, splayed on the floor, with blood running down her forehead.
we didn't know that someone was at the house working on the furnace. he had just finished and was leaving the cellar through the outside door. well, the outside cellar door is a hatch in the floor of the back porch right beneath the kitchen door. so, my grandmother-unaware that anyone was there--went to throw garbage out on the porch. when she stepped onto the porch, there wasn't any porch there. and she fell into the cellar.
they had to airlift her to stonybrook because of her head trauma. and thank god. she needed six stiches on her head--and it's a blessing she needed so few--and she's got multiple fractures: they're thinking both ankles, her left wrist, her right elbow, maybe other parts of the legs...
anyway, it was a wakeup call. she just can't catch a break, and yet she's such a trooper. she was in the hospital, broken bones still not set, worrying about christmas gifts and food going bad and taxes and her upstairs neighbors... it just puts everything in perspective, you know?
