Red Blades

For all of the absurd chaos around me, let loose just seconds prior with a poorly-timed slip and a sudden pop, my mind and body were engulfed by a shocked stillness. Seventeen years later, I can still feel that moment of hopeless dread. There was too much to contemplate, but contemplate was all I could do; if there was a light at the end of this tunnel, I wasn’t going to get there on my own two feet.

I can’t tell you much about shock or its stages, but I doubt my immediate line of thought was very unique for a trauma victim. “This isn’t really happening. Maybe it’s a dream. Try to wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP! Uh-oh…”

I glanced at the yellow riding mower; it sat motionless a short distance away. I was still trying to think my way out of this. If I wasn’t in a dream, maybe I could concentrate and transition to an alternate universe, or travel back in time and have a second chance. There had to be a way to undo it. This couldn’t happen — yet it already had.

Mom was running to my side now. As well as my memory of that exact moment serves me, I don’t know what we said to each other. I also can’t say, looking back, that I would trade places with her; the scene was almost as horrifying as they can get for a mother.

* * * * *

It was a Thursday — her first day of summer vacation, and my fourth. It was Grandma and Grandpa’s anniversary, and she decided she would mow their lawn as part of her gift to them. We also needed to take one of our TVs to her school for the tech guys to repair. I would have preferred to spend this time playing with toy guns, friends and videogames, but my hooligan tendencies at age nine meant that I wasn’t quite ready to be home alone. In fact, there’s a 50/50 70/30 chance I was grounded from going out.

At that point in time, Mom and I are in a perpetual cycle of arguments and peace. It will be about a decade until this war goes cold. For now, we poke at each other’s tempers with strategic verbal attacks, until a cease fire can be reached over a peace summit/family dinner (my dad playing the part of Clinton to our Arafat/Barak). However, little gets between the joy of a teacher or student freshly released from the cells of their classrooms.

As we drive past the Delco Plaza Mall, the summer wind flows through our 1990 non-air-conditioned Dodge Colt, and the TV sways side-to-side in the back seat. Storm likes to sit on Mom’s lap, because I’m too short for the mutt to get her entire upper body up and out of the window. She needs to be all the way outside the window, you know, because. It’s far too nice outside to hang indoors when we get to Grandma’s, so I run after Storm, waving goodbye to Mom as she rolls the riding mower out of the garage. The next time we meet, it won’t be like this. This is bliss.

With no playmates around this neighborhood, fun time is almost always a solo venture. I don’t bother with the public playground much ever since Dad and Grandpa built a treehouse swing set combo in the back yard. This wasn’t some plastic or aluminum thing that was manufactured in China and sold at Toys’R’Us. They made the plans and bought the lumber and materials, while I oversaw construction with the anticipation of a first-time homeowner. The climbing rope was my least favorite element; I would much rather swing, hang upside down on the trapeze, or play “fort” in the main structure. On the afternoon of June 12, 1997, for whatever reason, I climbed on that rope — at the same time that my mother was finishing up the edges of the back yard.

* * * * *

I ascend the rope knot-by-knot, my back to the green blades of grass on the edge of the property. Only about a foot off the ground, my hands slip. There’s no doubt about it, I’m going down. But right when my hands lose their grip, my legs are pushing up — so I fall out and away. I land on my butt, bracing my arms behind me so I don’t hit my head. My left leg is bent upwards toward my chest, and my right leg is extended out, pointing back at that dumb rope. I’m fine — hardly a scratch.

I hadn’t paid any attention to the lawnmower, and Mom didn’t see me fall. As if we were working in tandem and intentionally, she shifted into reverse just before my hands slipped. By the time I had absorbed my landing, she had turned her eyes forward while the mower still rolled backwards. There was no chance to act. Have you ever run over a sizeable object with a lawnmower? They don’t react well to this kind of thing. When the blade struck my outstretched foot, it stopped turning completely. The mower itself did a bunny hop and landed a foot away from me.

Nowadays, I tease and joke with Mom about all of this — she clearly ran me over because I was such a headache of a child. We still chuckle about the fact that upon picking me up, we both came crashing back down to the ground, because her legs were akin to Jello in that instant. Despite this, I’ve always admired how swiftly she jumped into action. My grandmother, bless her, couldn’t even unlock the car door.

Mom finally got her legs under her, and we made our way to the front of the house. Grandma got Storm inside in record time, and fumbled with the car keys while we waited at the Colt’s passenger door. And waited. (Love you, Grandma.) Mom leaned me against the car to free up her right hand, took the keys, opened the door, and put me down on Grandma’s lap. I couldn’t stretch out across the back seat; the TV was still there, so my foot would have to rest up on the dashboard. They say we made every light except one, which we ran. I was somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness at this point. I remember muttering the Our Father and repeatedly telling Mom and Grandma that I love them. Looking back, it wasn’t very realistic to think that this would be a fatal accident. Nonetheless, in my mind, I was saying goodbye to this world.

The next conscious memory I have was from a hospital bed. Dad was there; Mom was passed out in another room. He says he’ll never forget how terrible it looked when they got my shoe off. My right big toe was dangling by a flap, sliced to the bone across its base. He also remembers the relief he felt when they flipped that flap of a toe back into place. The Airwalk skateboarding shoes I was wearing had a very thick sole, and saved my foot. Not “probably saved.” They saved my foot. I shudder when I think about the fact that the shoe is what stopped the blades from spinning; if it wasn’t for that, I would likely be an amputee.

* * * * *

It was still just Dad in the room, comforting me, when the doctors came in. They were plastic surgeons trying to get a better look at the 47 stitches that were holding my flap in place. No one knew this, not even me, but my right leg had more or less stayed in same position since the car ride — bent just very slightly. The doctors started adjusting my leg to get a better look. I hadn’t screamed so loudly or been in that much pain this entire time. Dad knew something was wrong, but the doctors insisted that I was just in pain from my foot. They kept adjusting, I kept screaming bloody murder, and Dad insisted back. So they relented, in that how-would-you-know-better-than-me way that doctors (rarely) do, and sent me down the hall for x-rays. As it turned out, the weight of the rear tire running over my leg broke my tibia.

So there I was, the next day, the fifth day of my summer break, with a full-length leg cast and a notch cut out of it over my toes, so the stitches could be cleaned twice daily. The cast would come off in 8–10 weeks, just in time to go back to school. It was a bummer to not be able to get around, but I had an endless supply of ice cream and played videogames without time limits for the first time in my life. I was too young then, or at least too immature, to gain an appreciation for what I almost lost — for what some have lost and what many take for granted. Even if I had not lost my foot, but lost my toe, the physical rehabilitation wouldn’t have brought me back to my original form. I probably would have walked with a severe limp for the rest of my life, because the big toe plays a crucial role in the simplest of balancing.

I couldn’t be more thankful for the way luck and/or fate played out that day. I’m thankful that it was only my foot in the path of that blade, that I was wearing my Airwalks, that Mom acted so bravely and that Dad insisted back.