catelin

It was a Sunday. The kids woke up, as usual, at the crack of dawn and came scampering into my room. We lounged in bed for a couple of hours watching cartoons, eating Pop Tarts, putting our heads under the covers and making faces at each other. I finally got up and started making a real breakfast. The boys were playing in the living room. It was one of those really beautiful mornings that make you feel cozy and content with life in general. I have these great floor to ceiling windows in a house which is partially up on stilts. We live on a hill, near a lake. Most days I can look out past the four acres of woods for miles.

I had cinnamon rolls in the oven and sat down to turn on the computer and check my e-mail. This was my morning routine on the weekends. I'd sort through junk mail, friend mail, news groups. I was thinking about getting a dog, so I'd been looking through animal rescue organizations on the net. The kids were talking to each other and playing with Leggos. Then I heard the sound. It was a soft whoosh, barely discernible above the sound of the television. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was a sound that I shouldn't be hearing. Something was wrong. I turned around and saw Max, my oldest. He was almost four then. My little one, Jacob, was 18 months old. I quickly scanned the room for him but he wasn't there. What I did see was an open window with no screen.

I ran to the window and looked down. There was my baby, my Jacob, laying 12 feet below on his back. His eyes were closed and his head turned sideways. This all happened in a matter of seconds. I heard the thought in my head. My baby is dead. In that moment I felt like every cell in my body exploded. It was as if I could see myself standing there, with my entire being blasted into tiny shards of glass. I grabbed the phone and ran out the door, sobbing, dialing 911, trying to breathe. It only took about 10 seconds for me to reach the back of the house and there was Jacob, standing up, crying. I was giving all of my information to the operator while I looked at him, checked his ears for blood, checked his nose, the color of his gums, his arms and legs. He just kept screaming, "Mommy, Mommy" and hiding his face in my neck.

The neighbor came running and the ambulance drove up. Max was clinging to me and I was trying not to be hysterical. I kept going over and over in my head whether the window locks were fastened. I've always been so careful. My friends have always chided me that I am too cautious about things like that. I've always told them that you can never be too careful when it comes to your kids. That's the kind of mother I was. But here I was getting into the ambulance, telling Max to go with my neighbor. Telling him everything was going to be fine. While the paramedics are putting my screaming child onto a backboard, I make the call to his father. Tell him there's been an accident. Jacob fell out the window. He shrieks through the line at me, "How the FUCK did this happen?!" All I can do is cry and tell him that we're on our way to the hospital.

We live out in the country, miles from the nearest hospital. The Sheriff's Department clears the farm road that's near the house and we wait for the Medi-Vac helicopter. By this time, I'm trying to tell myself that everything is all right. Jacob's crying. That's good. Very good. I hear one EMT tell the other one to get the intubation kit ready. I lose it. I start wailing, rocking myself. I know from my job how quickly a child can die. How everything seems all right one minute and then they're gone the next. That's all I can think of. I moan to myself, "Ohhhhh, this is bad. This is very bad." They tell me that I can't go in the copter unless I calm down. I force myself to shut up. I hold Jacob's hand and they move us into the helicopter. We fly.

When we get to the hospital, a team rushes out to meet us. There's CAT scans, x-rays, tubes, wires...the works. I tell my story again and again. I tell them how I am so careful. How I have window locks. How I had just turned my back for a second. I see them looking at me. I know that they're trying to figure out whether to believe me or not. Whether to call Child Protective Services. I understand that, but I still have to stifle the urge to scream at them. You miserable fucks! How can you even think I'd ever hurt my own child? I talk to twenty different people and they eventually conclude that it was just a horrible accident. The ER doc tells me that Jacob is fine except for slightly elevated liver enzymes, which is to be expected. He tells me how lucky Jacob is and that another child who fell the week before from a lesser height was permanently brain damaged. I nod my head but don't hear much after that because I'm singing in my head, "He's fine. He's fine. He's fine."

We stayed at the hospital for two days while they kept Jacob for observation. The doctors jokingly dubbed him "Superbaby" and made funny faces at him to make him laugh. We went home and within the next few weeks got back into the rhythms our lives had before the accident. I had a carpenter come in and put rails across all the windows. Jacob still looks at the window and points to the ground. "Hey, Mom, remember? I fell," he says. He's three now. Since that day, I look at him and see two lives. The one I have with him and the one I would have had without him. Even on the happiest, brightest days I can still see that shadow hovering behind us. Several times since then, I'll see Max touch Jacob's cheek or his hair. He'll look at me and say in his very serious little old man way, "I remember when Jacob fell." I wonder if he sees the same shadow. I had always heard before that day how the worst thing in this world is for a parent to outlive a child. I never knew until I faced the possibility myself what a terrible truth that really is.