by D. Keith Shurtleff

Created on: May 23, 2008   Last Updated: May 28, 2008

Catch 22

It was a moment of pure panic. The children and I were upstairs in our family room watching TV when Joseph, my 18 month old, decided it was time to use psychological warfare on his mother. He wandered away from the family toward the stairway that lead to the main floor of our home. Then, when he was sufficiently out of my reach, he turned and looked at me with a mischievous and playful grin. He wanted to play that familiar and favorite game "chase me!" I was only slightly aware of him and did not take the bait, and he knew it, so he backed closer to the stairs all the time looking at me with those big smiling eyes and waiting for the inevitable reaction which would lead to the chase. It was then that I fully realized his danger. Panic set in and my motherly instincts went on full alert. With all the maternal authority I could muster, I ordered him to stop and then called for him to come back, but he just smiled enjoying the attention and his newly found power. As I rose to go after him he immediately backed closer to the stairs. I was petrified. I knew I had to grab him, but realized that any motion I made toward him would sent him flying in chase, right over the edge.

I was frozen in panic, my mind racing, my anxiety obviously causing him great joy. I kept calling for him to come back, but he only saw my pleadings as the necessary preliminaries to the coming chase and he began to giggle and jump with even more excitement, filled with childlike anticipation, but totally oblivious to the danger that lay just inches behind him. I yearned to rush to him and grab him, but did not dare to move. All I could do was to call to him, plead with him, beckon to him, and hope he would return,a weak strategy, but it was all I had. That would have been a perfect time for his Father to come up the stairs and send him running to my arms in a different, but much safer, variation of the same chase game. But alas, it was not to be, I was on my own. Then to my shock and his great surprise, Joseph became so excited and giggly that on his own he just sort of tipped backward and down the stairs, tumbling wildly, oblivious to my screams of horror. Thankfully his flexible little body and the carpeted stairs prevented him from injury, and Joseph, now 10, has long since forgotten the event. However, my feelings of abject and total helplessness during that tense stand off will remain vividly ingrained in my memory.

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