I was upstairs the other morning, stumbling around like I do at that time of day, clawing the cobwebs off my brain to start thinking straight. Our house is so quiet these days, with all three sons off living their lives elsewhere, and their bedrooms generally unused, except for when the cats are in need of a new soft spot in the sun. As I shuffled along to the bathroom, I heard John at the bottom of the steps. “Miles,” he called. Miles is one of our three cats. “Come eat.” As odd as it may sound, his voice gently urging a cat to come downstairs for breakfast was comforting to me. I thought of how he used to call up to the boys, and how I did, too, coaxing them downstairs for food or travel or homework or whatever. Then I thought of my own mom calling up our stairs at home. “Mary Ruth! Kathryn! Ben! Wake up!” That was our alarm clock then. My mom’s voice, sprinting up the steps and into our ears at 7 a.m. And so the day would begin, with our competition for the upstairs bathroom starting out the morning. That voice at the bottom of the steps, those words, that particular tone… that’s how our day started for years.
The steps in my childhood home as well as my home now have played pivotal roles in the growing up of all these offspring. The steps at home go straight up, with a banister on the right. As the climber ascends, the view of the living room is gradually obscured by the line of the second floor. The steps are wide with generous treads. They are comfortable stairs, built by my dad in the 1950s. There is a small landing at the top, with three bedrooms and a bathroom all branching off. That spot was where we five kids would congregate on Christmas morning, after Don had wakened us with a blaring trombone solo, or Ben had torn into his trap set to send us all straight up from our pillows. We would gather at the top of the steps, as we weren’t allowed to go down until Mom and Dad said okay. And Dad would drag it on so long, wandering around down there doing who knows what, with us begging, “Can we come down yet?” And him chuckling… “Noooo, not yet. Stay up there. No looking,” he would say, enjoying the power over our crazy yearning to get on with the gift-ripping frenzy. Kathryn and I would sit on the top step. Then we would inch down to the next one, trying not to look but wanting to so much. At long last, from the bottom of the steps, Mom would say, “Okay!” and we would thunder down those stairs with such giddiness, turning to see what might have appeared under the tree overnight. That moment of seeing what is there, but not knowing, and of anticipating how well our own gifts to our parents or sibs would be received, but holding fast to those secrets for just a bit longer — that is perhaps the absolute very best moment of the entire day, or even the whole season.
The bottom of the steps at home is also a particularly historic spot for me personally, and not for something all that good. When I was six years old, my mom began her job at the family newspaper business. I wasn’t happy about it, according to my mom. She only worked two days a week, Tuesday and Wednesday, but that meant that on those two days, I had to come home from school and be there with just my sister Kathryn and brother Ben, and sometimes Don, I guess, but it seems he was off doing things by that time. I apparently guilted my mother in the way only a 6-year-old can do, and she still remembers it. (She’s 90. Yeah.) So it was not helpful to her sense of parental guilt when I had my moment with the bottom of the steps. I remember it still. The TV was on and Kathryn and Ben were watching something. Probably Adventure Time with Paul Shannon, which used to be on right after school. I wore a dress to school most days back then, and I had taken my dress off and I guess was going to go up to the bedroom Kathryn and I shared to put on my after-school duds. I was wearing a white slip and white tights. A lot of white. For a reason long forgotten, I was in a hurry and was planning to run up the steps. I slammed my right leotarded foot on that first smooth step, and it slipped hard to the left. Down I crashed to the right, my head bashing into the newel post, which had a rather sharp corner. That sharp corner sliced open a gash about a half-inch from my right eye. Now, a deep cut to the face can be minor, but it is most likely going to produce one spectacularly gory mess. This was no exception. I rose up to see great splotches of blood splashing onto my white slip and white tights. I was utterly stunned, and horrified. I remember screaming, and then Kathryn yelling for Ben. My brother came running to me and picked me up. I was six, so he was 14. He carried me into the bathroom, telling me I was all right. I bled all over him and all over the floor. I was absolutely terrified, but I do remember Ben settling me on the little footstool in the bathroom and talking to me with such calm. He seemed so old to me at the time — I am always impressed to think that he was just 14. He got a four-by-four-inch bandage out of the medicine cabinet and pushed it against my gash. He told me I would be all right. Then Kathryn stayed with me and he went to the phone to call Dad.
In what seemed only a few minutes, Dad was there, arriving in his signature trench coat and man hat. I do recall him being slightly taken aback by the gore. It was a mess. And I was his six-year-old daughter, so I’m sure it was a little daunting. But he was a ski patroller and a patrol instructor, so he knew what to do. Off we went to the hospital, and all this time, no one had told Mom a thing. I remember being on a table in the emergency room, and Dr. James Feaster preparing to stitch up my cut. I was lying there crying, now unable to see out of my eye because it was swelling. Dr. Feaster was known for his bedside manner. And by that I mean he was known for being flat-out rude to patients. He looked at my cut and then barked, “Why are you crying?” I had to think for a minute. “Because I’m scared!” I said. “Well, there is no reason to be scared. Stop crying.” And I did. Thinking back on it, I do wish I would’ve said, “I’m six years old, you know. I just watched blood flow out of my head. So how about backing off?” But I did stop crying. Then I remember hearing the thread as he pulled it through my flesh. I couldn’t feel it, but I did hear it. Five stitches, he announced.
“You will have a black eye,” he said brusquely. That was exciting. A black eye! And I had stitches! And it didn’t even hurt that much. Dad and I left the hospital, and he took me to the newspaper office. He said, “Go say hello to your mom.” I immediately obeyed. I found her at the Line-o-Type machine, typing away. “Hi, Mommy,” I said. She turned to me and I remember her mouth dropping open. “Oh, Mary Ruth! What happened to you?!” It was delicious. I looked pretty beaten up, I guess, and truth be told, it was getting sore. I suppose the numbing agent was wearing off. But wow, to see Mom’s face was pretty cool. She grabbed me in a hug and demanded to know what happened. Everyone demanded to know that for the next few weeks, in fact, because I sure did develop an impressive shiner. I worked so hard to remember the word “newel” so I could tell the tale properly.
About two years ago I saw an eye doctor for a check up. He was looking and looking at my right eye. He said he saw what looked like a cataract, but it was not that.
“Did you ever have a head injury?” he asked. “You seem to have a small scar on your right eye.” I thought for a bit, scanning my memory… then I recalled the splashes of blood and the sound of thread. “Yes!” I said. “Yes, I did have an injury, and I shall tell you all about it.” And I did.
I wore white on those steps some years later. John and I were married at Mom and Dad’s house, and I put my wedding dress on in my room. Kim Sanders styled my hair there, and I put on all my jewelry and makeup. Then I came down the steps, just minutes before we were to head out to the yard to do the thing. I remember my little nieces all standing there, ready to escort me as a gaggle of flower girls. Sara, who was about 9, gasped and said, “You look beautiful!” and Lori, who was about 7, joined in. “So beautiful!” she squeaked. And it was so sweet, these dear little girls, all dressed up, with flowers in their hair. And my dad there to give me his arm, my dear sister to walk with me, and my best friend Judy, too. Mom had worried it would rain, but the sun was beaming in a brilliant blue sky, and she was so relieved. My friends were there, and my family-to-be. Everyone. So happy and light. And there was my dear John, so handsome in his dark suit, waiting for me under the apple tree, smiling. Wearing white on the steps that day was warm and joyous, with no gore at all.
When John and I bought our house some years later, we knew our steps would have to be replaced. They were squishy in places and so ugly. But our first baby was on the way, and he was followed up in short order by two more, so the step project was put much farther down the list. (Many years sped by before John got to it, but he did manage it at long last.) The steps in our house are in three sections. There are three, then there is a landing. About seven more then go up at left, and there is another landing. And then five more, also at left, finally end at the second floor. We were amused when one of the boy’s teenaged friends came into the house for her first time and said, “It’s true! It is just like the Weasleys’ house!” I thought that was both funny and a tad disconcerting, considering the mess that the Weasleys seemed to live in most of the time. “Who says that?” I asked. She continued to gaze up our stairwell as she answered dreamily, “Everyone.”
When Robert, our oldest, was a toddler, he was fascinated with the steps. He adored climbing up, but then had no idea how to get down. I have heard many parents report the same. We tried to block off the steps, but the first three are rather wide, sort of opening into the front foyer. It was hard to find things to completely obscure the entire opening. He would find a way, and before we knew it, we’d hear him at the top of the stairs, fussing. I remember hearing him there, and trying to move the furniture and cardboard and other obstacles out of the way to get to him. But I was too late. He tried to come down and lost his balance. His little toddler body was rolling, clunking, slapping, and bonking down the steps and there was nothing I could do about it. Terrifying. He cried, I cried… but he was fine. And I do think he was a little less likely to start back up, at least for a while.
The top of the steps in our house is the same on Christmas morning as that spot at my childhood home. Our boys still congregate there as John and I wander around downstairs, annoying them by plodding about, making coffee, yawning… “Can we come down yet?” “No….. not quite….” But then we say it, up the steps, and down they fly, like puppies. Nowadays it is mostly a perfunctory process done in honor of years past. But when they were little, it was a true exercise in the value of chomping at the bit.
When the boys are home these days, which is rare, I do take some comfort in hollering up the steps when dinner is ready or when it’s time to play a game or go for a hike. Up the stairs my voice goes… and down they come. A simple thing. As simple as my husband now calling up the stairway to our 13-year-old cat with hyperthyroidism and anxiety, coaxing him to come on down for his food. There is kindness in that. Kindness and care for another living thing.
I am grateful that a voice drifted up to my room all those years, and I am just as grateful that my boys had that, too. They knew there was going to be someone’s voice rousing them from those sometimes strange early morning dreams. Someone was going to reach into that fog and pull them out for another day. And there would be enough food to eat, enough clean and warm clothes to wear, and affection in abundance. They knew they were loved, just as my siblings and I did; and just as John’s family did. We all landed into families of compassion, and that is something to cherish, and to pass on in any way possible. Everyone deserves a gentle nudge from the stairway.
