This Story Could've Been Better

But it could have been a lot worse

I’ll read this story to you, here ☝🏼

I wish this story was about an uneventful afternoon a few years ago when my then-teenaged son and I were home alone while my husband was out of town for the weekend. I wish I could tell you my son was watching one of his Pixar movies in the living room and I came down the carpeted stairs with absolutely nothing in my arms, holding the railing carefully, and not losing my footing in the slightest.

If I could, I would tell you I walked easily over to where my mostly non-verbal autistic son sat in his favorite cushy green chair with his feet up on the ottoman, and I did not cry when he told me, “Fix your hair,” in reaction to seeing that my long hair had fallen in front of my shoulders.

It would be nice if I could say I didn’t sob and send him to his room, but only shrugged and brushed my hair back, with nary a hurt feeling, telling myself that we taught him this three-word phrase to curb his habit of touching my hair (or random stranger’s ponytails) when he felt the impulse to fix it to his liking. Using these words reminded him to keep his hands to himself, and although I still didn’t know how to help him get past this obsession he’d developed over how other peoples’ hair looked, I can’t say I was thinking about that at all after coming down those stairs.

I can‘t tell it to you this way because that would be a boring story.

And, that’s not what happened.

I hate to tell you that on that soon-to-be-eventful afternoon, I came down those stairs with my hands full. I don’t remember what I was carrying. Papers and binders for work, maybe, or writing. A half full warmish cup of coffee. My phone.

Our staircase in that house was a two-way rise with a small landing in the middle, lit by an ever-dusty chandelier, and terminating at the brown, faux-wood tile of our living room. It had a nice railing, too. A nice, useless railing for someone with too much stuff in her hands.

As I came into view of my son sitting across the living room, his chair angled toward the spot where my body would land, I regretted my choice to wear fuzzy socks on carpeted stairs.

My stupid feet slipped out from under me when I was four or five steps from the bottom. I smacked down hard on my butt, and my coffee cup and papers went flying. I cried out as I bumped-slid the last few steps, collapsing out of the stairway onto my hands and knees on the tile. My pants were soaked with coffee, and pain shot up my back and down my legs.

I wish I could tell you my kid sprang up from his chair to offer help and sympathy to his clumsy mother. In that alternate universe, he didn’t sit and watch me from his chair, giving me a look of mildly irritated curiosity, but grabbed a rag to sop up the coffee and wipe down the walls, collected my scattered papers, and maybe brought me some ice for my soon-to-be very sore backside. It didn’t happen like that.

But I’m glad I can’t tell you that I twisted my ankle or broke my arm and had to corral my can’t-be-left-alone son into the car so I could get myself to urgent care.

I also have no reason, thank God, to relay a story of how I tumbled to the bottom of the stairs, with my son looking on, and smashed my head against the hard tile. You won’t have to hear from anyone else either, how I lay unconscious, bleeding, or worse, leaving my son confused and alone, unable to call for help, for a sickening amount of time before someone came to check on us.

But, I also can’t tell you that I handled the immediate aftermath of my fall with any sort of grace, since those nightmare scenarios all flashed through my mind as I crashed stupidly down the stairs. I was instantly aware of how alone we were. I did not have the breath for an elegant response to his ill-timed words.

I wish I could tell you I did not snap at my son, nor send him out of my sight; that I didn’t need to limp upstairs later, after I’d cleaned up and calmed down, to find him in his room and apologize, reminding myself he was probably scared, too.

I want so badly to tell you that he asked if I was OK. But even though he couldn’t, I sat with him and reassured him anyway.

I will tell you this. Although what actually happened that day was decidedly not funny in the moment, in a few days—say, by the time that beautiful, deep purple bruise had bloomed across my left butt cheek—I could laugh about it.

This story is about an otherwise uneventful afternoon, when I slipped on the stairs on the way to make my son a snack, hit the floor hard, and wept from shock and pain and fear of everything that could’ve happened when I forgot to be careful and wore socks on carpeted stairs.

From his safe, comfy armchair across the living room, my son responded with perhaps the only words he could retrieve in the face of his mother’s disheveled distress on the floor before him.

“Fix your hair.”

Ah, what can I say? Life around here, it’s like this.

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Thanks, as always, for being here. If you liked this one, please leave me a comment or click the ♡ button—these interactions help others find me!

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P.S. Medicaid and Social Security matter a whole lot to my family. If you’re in the U.S., please contact your representatives to tell them you oppose cuts to Medicaid and the negative impacts on SSA due to staffing cuts & office closures.

• ACLU: Save Medicaid - send a note to your representatives

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - info on threats to Medicaid in the current budget proposals, and how DOGE actions are damaging Social Security

• Alliance of Retired Americans - Fact Sheets on truth and lies about these vital programs

And, if you’re in Arizona, tell your representatives to stop playing politics and fully fund the Division of Developmental Disabilities.

Thank you!!