Four days ago I posted this on my Facebook page:
I think my Mom is tired of my lack of enthusiasm for decorating my house…she’s bringing over paint tomorrow. I’ll have her clean up a bit while she’s here. Old people like to feel needed.
Mom decided the playroom I use for the daycare could use a fresh coat of paint. She knows I’m interior decorator challenged and that I need to be jump started into projects like that so she brought me paint samples to choose from and has been trying to plan a painting weekend for a few weeks now.
When we finally nailed down a day to begin she came skipping over with paint and rollers and paint brushes and all kinds of goodies and we got to work. When we began Mom grabbed the ladder and got to work on the trim at the top of the walls…because it totally made sense to put my 60 year old mother on a ladder 8 feet high while I carefully worked on the trim just above the molding….safely…on the floor.
If you can’t see where I’m headed with this allow me to give you a clue…she fell.
It was awful and I’m traumatized for life after watching that fall play out.
The ladder was resting against the wall on my hardwood floors. I heard a shift and looked up from my spot on the safe and sturdy floor as she stopped what she was doing to readjust. Next thing I knew the entire mother/ladder combo was loudly sliding down the wall before crashing to the floor. She held on the whole way down and her body and face slammed hard when it hit the bottom.
I screamed her name and started flitting around like a little lost bird without a clue as to what to do with her and an overwhelming sense of guilt/shock/regret/horrified-ness.
Whenever I need help my Mom is the first person I call. She always knows what to do…so in true Kathy fashion my Mom goes crashing to the floor and instead of taking charge and staying calm and directing….I’m asking HER what I should do to help HER.
The whole thing was terrible. She asked me to bring her a pillow so she could just lay there for a minute and process the pain and shock to her body. Her chest and wrists took the brunt of her fall and it seemed as if her cup of paint protected her because although it looked like she full on face planted…there was a dent in the cup she had been holding and her face was covered in paint. Her eyes, nose, glasses, mouth, hair…everything. Covered. In. Paint.
When she slowly gathered herself together she started poking fun at the situation…probably to make me feel better. She forced me to take a picture. I didn’t want to, but she was all “oh come on! What’s wrong with you?? Why aren’t you laughing??” and I just kept looking at her cross eyed because I was certain she’d lost her damn mind and the last thing I was thinking about was taking a picture of my beaten up Mom and posting it on my blog.
And then I took the picture.
And hours later, Laina drew her own.
And my Mom will never be permitted to paint here again…with a ladder.