Age Three: The Edge of the Cliff

This is Day 3 of the October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge, which is something about a 3 year old.  To catch more on this, please visit  Jane Ann McLachlan.

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She was three years old, and her Mum put her in the back seat of the Ford Expedition.  All tucked in, yes indeed.  Seat belt tight, pillow under the neck for when she took the inevitable nap.  It was a drive home, so the baby had a diaper change, a full stomach, and you know.  The nap was next.  They had just finished visiting Grandma with her heart attack.  Grandma lived in a city that was over the hill, and today they had taken the dog Biscuit for a visit in the Nursing Home.  All was well with the world.

It was a sunny California Tuesday afternoon, April 24, 2006 at 2:16 pm to be exact.  Pepperdine University was on the right, and the cliffs of Malibu beach were just beyond the baseball diamond that was straight ahead. The sea gulls swerved away from imaginary pockets in the sky, and

All of a sudden.  Whoosh.  Spin.  Smack.  Stopped.

Cars driving past.  Her car was facing the wrong side of the street, and traffic simply veered out of the way, passing her.  No one stopped.

She didn't cry.  She wasn't worried.  She didn't know what happened.

When her Mum opened the door, she opened it too hard, and it shut on Mum's arm.  She screeched a bit, seeming really perturbed.  She asked the baby, "Are you okay?"  The baby looked up at her Mum, wondering where her toy was, as it had fallen to the ground.  "Yes, Mum.  Can I have my toy now?" Yes, that was a three-year old for you.

After that, Mum would leave the house sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a few weeks.  The baby grew and came to know that the ambulance in the home driveway meant that Mum was being taken away again.  Again.  Something about her brain, something about well, her brain.

The baby didn't want to go to the hospital to visit her Mum.  She did, though, because it made her Mummy happy.  She missed her Mum, and no one quite brushed her hair, brushed her teeth, nor read books to her like Mum had done before.

Weeks went by, then months, then years.  Mum was in a wheelchair and she couldn't talk.  Then she had an "iv", then she baked a Thanksgiving turkey.  After that, she could walk with a walker.  And after that, after a long time, she could walk with a cane.  One day, she tripped on the cane and in her anger, she threw it in the trash can.  She never used a cane again.

So today, the baby is a girl.  She is eleven.  She watches her Mum drive, and she listens to Mum tell stories of morning glories, of ladybugs and of rhymes, of songs and of the times.

And she knows that the  edge of the cliff is just the edge.
It can be diverted.
If you stay on top, it doesn't matter that there's a cliff below.
It just doesn't matter.

Age Two: Getting Past the Edge of the Bed

This is Day 2 of the October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge, which is something about a 2 year old.  To catch more on this, please visit  Jane Ann McLachlan.


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"Oh boy!"

She woke up and had a quick thought.  "Oh!"

The little two-year old toddler hurriedly threw the blankets back, sun-drenched room bright.  Her orange night-light was still on, for some reason, and the checkered red sheets spoke of things colored and happy.

Her dark green pajamas were those kind with a zipper and feet, padded on the bottom with that sticky pad kind of stuff.  Rolling over on her stomach, she positioned her body so that it was perpendicular to the bed.  She meticulously laid her head on the middle of the bed, then scooted her legs so they flipped over the edge of the bed.  This was the challenge of the day:  to get past the edge of the bed.  To get to greater things that were unseen.

She laid on her belly first, then grabbed onto the bedsheets with her little hands clenched tightly.  Her feet dangled over the edge, now her knees were on the edge.  One hand loosened grip and moved closer to the edge, too.  Her hips pushed on the edge of the bed.  Now both fists were white at the knuckles.   Slowly, ever so slowly, she let gravity pull her down.  The edge of the bed was at her belly now.  Her feet swung from the bed, and they inched down.

"Uh!  Uh!"  She grunted as her eyes looked at her own back.  She looked backwards so hard that her eyes hurt.  It was morning again and she just had to do it!  "Uh!"  She couldn't wait!  She had to get out of this bed!

"Bam!"  Her feet hit the floor, and she went tumbling overboard.  "Uh!"  Her body was going upward now, picking herself up.  She was glad to be off the bed, at least.  This was progress.

Quickly, she picked herself up and started running.  But she fell again.  She had been in forward motion, and her body lost control and pitched forward.   "Boom!"

"Uh!"  She was sprawled out with her hands before her, elbows down.  She struggled a bit.  "Uh!"  Wiggled this way and that, grunting as she lifted herself again.   At last, she was on her padded feet again.

"Mama!  Where?"  Her eyes searched left and right, right and left as she made her way out of the sun-soaked room.  Into the hallway she went, scrunching her eyes to adjust to the dark hallway.

She looked under the bookcase.  She peered under the chair.  She searched.  She pouted.  Nothing was there.

Then she had a thought.  "Outside!"

She toddled over to the back door, hands smearing another set of handprints on the glass window.   "Oh boy!"  She smiled.   Relief.  Bliss.  Now she could play.

Her eyes widened as she saw them together.  The brother and sister cats were licking themselves in the sun, bellies up, no care in the world.  She thought they were little people stuck inside of a cat's body.  One was Fluffy, and one was Mattie.  Today she would put them in her blue bucket, then put them on her slide.  They would slide down the slide, and she would laugh.

She would do this over and over again, just like yesterday.

There was nothing else that she wanted to do.

That's all she wanted, and that's what the whole day was all about.

That's it.