Mom Saves The Day!

We are having a new roof installed and as soon as I saw the worker hauling a ladder around, I flashed on a rather interesting story with Mom as the main character. (Go figure!)

I was around 4-5 years old, I suppose. We lived in this beautiful house on Adams. It had the craziest damn wallpaper in the living room and going up the stairs, but I loved that house... it had charm. Another of the rather "charming" features of this house was its clothes line. It was up on the second floor and out a second floor window. You had to pull the clothes line to get the clothes to move towards you and into the house if you wanted to check if they were dry or ready to take down. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen.I didn't understand the whole concept then and I can't saying my "understanding" has improved much since.

I was out in the backyard messing around when I noticed Mom pulling that dang clothes line, hanging something up, then pulling that line, which sent the clothes further out the window on one side of the line and brought new line for her to hang more stuff on with the other side of the line (It kinda looped around.) You know what? This is REALLY hard to describe. There is probably technical terminology for this archaic way of doing laundry and I am not knowledgable .. I wonder if I could sketch it???

It was quite a sight... Mom hanging half out the bedroom window, putting clothes on this crazy clothes line. After Mom finished that, we needed to go some place. Where, I don't remember... and probably irrelevant anyway.

When we got home, the door was locked. Mom let fly with a few colorful and not so colorful words and proceeded to wander all around the house looking for SOME kind of way to get in. Suddenly Mom looked up and I knew what she was thinking and I wasn't liking it. "We need a ladder." My eyes followed hers and I saw that she had spotted the window with the clothes line was open. She went across the alley and borrowed a ladder. Now, mind you, this window was on the second floor and to a kid it looks like it is AT LEAST a thousand miles up into the air. Of that memory, the pictures in my mind are hilarious... Mom lugging this huge ladder across the alley into our backyard, struggling with this monster of a thing, getting it up against the house under the window and then up she goes. I was a scared and nervous wreck. I remember standing down there, watching my mom slowly go up this ladder, the look of fear and determination on her face. I felt all sweaty and my tummy didn't feel too good. But up my mom kept climbing until she finally made it to the window. She struggled there for a few seconds and then it looked as though the window swallowed her. She looked a little shaken when she looked down at me and told me to meet her at the backdoor. I ran towards the door and waited. Finally, I could hear her footsteps coming towards the door, then her releasing the locks and opening the door.

I still, to this day cannot believe that she climbed that ladder. She isn't too fond of heights. But as I get older, a completlely different picture emerges... I see the character of my Mom. I see the woman who was and still is the most selfless person I have ever met. The Mom who at that moment (and so many others as the years would show), set aside her own fears, her own shortcomings and thought of not herself, but of her child(ren). Maybe fear DID motivate her. Maybe she was afraid of what Dad might say or do. I don't know what my mom was thinking that day, but I do know this. That is my first memory of being amazed with my mom. She was my hero that day.... she climbed right up that ladder, into that house and unlocked the door like it was not that big of deal. Mom's are awesome, aren't they?