Dear Porch on My Grandmother’s Old House in Boston,
I don’t remember you at all; I remember you very clearly. That’s how it is with stories that are told so often you think you remember them. But I couldn’t have – I was too young – could I?
I fell off of you onto the ground below, barely cracking my two-year-old skull (they call it a hairline fracture). There is a charmingly simple but also dramatic story about towels were draped over your railing to dry and I went to imitate my mother and while her body was trapped in the molasses speed of nightmares I, with my shiny brown bowl-cut, slipped through the terrycloth curtain and fell.
Then a trip to the emergency room, a night alone in the hospital for observation, me telling my mother it would be OK when doctors told her to say goodbye.
I remember that moment; I don’t at all. I remember my mother’s pride and fear, but only because she has told me about it. That goodbye scene in TV shows where the loved one is draped over the gurney crying and the bright sickly lights of the ceiling bear down – I can verify that those lights are bright and round and seem to stare down from heaven because I remember it. But of course I don’t.
So. I don’t know if anyone ever let you know what happened, how it all shook out, Porch on My Grandmother’s Old House, but I’m OK. I don’t even remember it now.
Know what’s funny? I remember my dad saying once that I was a very happy baby until I was about two years old. What if that fall knocked something out of me forever? I mean, I’m not an unhappy person. Just saying. It’s a funny little thing to think about.
Also, those “railings” of yours were a joke.
-e.