And then I heard the loudest rolling tumble. It went on for too long. And then screams. It was Magnolia. I grabbed my towel from my hair to wrap around my body, and I ran downstairs. Nothing on the first floor. I jumped off the step into the dining room and rounded the corner to the basement stairs to see Jake coming up with Magnolia in his arms. There was also a dining chair at the bottom of the basement stairs in three parts, with one of the leg caps still sitting on the landing at the top.
Magnolia was holding her nose with both hands, screaming, "Am I bleeding?! Is there blood?!"
I grabbed her hands and she released them from her face. No blood. "You don't have a 'blood face'," I said.
Blood face. Ever since Magnolia was two, 'blood face' symbolizes the worst kind of injury to her. She was jumping on the bed one day, fell off, and face planted on the wood floors. While she wasn't actually bleeding, she looked in the mirror and saw her red scrape and said, "I have a blood face!"
The warning for any kind of "dangerous" activity since then has been, "If you do that, you might get a blood face."
As soon as I let her know she didn't have a blood face, some of the terror left her eyes. I looked at her arms and legs, no noticeable breaks. I looked at her nose, it looked straight. I looked at her back. Lots of scrapes.
She screamed again and grabbed her head, saying that it hurt so much. I looked at Jake and said, "Let's take her to the ER." He replied,
"Let's just watch her for a minute."
I went to the freezer and got an icepack for her head. It wasn't very flexible, so I switched and got a bag of frozen corn. The only thing better than frozen corn are frozen peas for an icepack. We were out of peas. She held it on her head and grew calmer. After a few more minutes, we were putting her emoji bandaids on her back, even though she didn't really need them. Bandaids make everything better. After she was covered up, she told us what happened.
She had moved a dining chair to the top of the basement stairs so Cora could come and get it and carry it down for fort building like she had the first three chairs. We have old dining chairs with chrome legs, so we put white rubber caps on the bottom to avoid scratching the floor. When Magnolia moved the chair to the landing, one of the caps fell off. She was standing with her back to the stairs trying to replace the cap when she fell backwards. She grabbed onto the chair to try and catch herself, but it fell down too. There was a minor sense of relief that the insanely loud sound I'd heard from two floors up was more dining chair than Magnolia hitting the stairs. Thinking about it still makes me want to throw up.
My initial irrational mom thought was to call the realtor, put Joan on the market, and start the search for a one-story house. I think I'm over the initial panic.
We got so lucky today. So very, very lucky. When I put her to bed this evening, she said her nose hurt. I'm going to keep an eye on it. No bruising or swelling on her nose so far. She legit fell down a whole wooden staircase and landed on a tile floor, all while tumbling down with a dining chair. The stairs have a few gouges, Magnolia has a few scrapes and bruises.
Grateful, grateful. Truly grateful I am.
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