Alice, Cat, and the Seven-Day Chest

Or "Why Tall Furniture Should be Attached to a Wall"
From Stories from Jones Farm
Copyright May 1992

[Part 6]

Just then the pediatrician returned.

“We were blessed,” he said softly. “The natural suture in the skull stretched and then went back into place. She’ll be fine. Keep her quiet the next ten days, and wake her up every hour tonight to make sure her pupils are equal and reactive.” The nurse told him about the wardrobe incident.

“You know” he confided, “the worst day of my medical career was when a little child was brought in who had run under the legs of piano movers who were lifting a baby grand. Somehow the piano got away from them and fell right on him. The piano legs had been temporarily removed, so it fell flat. There was nothing I could do. Now I tell all parents to leave the kids at Grandmother’s whenever they’re moving. And with someone as inquisitive as Alice,” he smiled down at her and Cat, “I’d leave her at Grandmother’s for weeks if I ever moved.”

As we left the Emergency Room, I saw my mom and dad in the waiting area. The radio station staff had called them. Mom took Alice into her arms and led the way to the cars, suggesting that we take a route by McDonalds. Leave it to Mom to remember that none of us had eaten all day long while we waited. Alice got to skip her bath that night, since she was always a wild banshee, loving the water, while Nicky settled down easily into a nap after his bath and feeding.

“Aunt Louise” (Auntie Claus), my sister, called from Chicago, where she was a surgical P.A. She talked to Alice, then asked me all the medical questions she could think of—friends later telling us she turned as blue as the "scrubs" she was wearing, just thinking that anything might have happened to Alice. She remembered seeing Alice throwing Cat into the air and catching him. Louise thought Cat might have landed on top of the seven-day chest, and that Alice might have been climbing up to get him.

Dad instantly produced the carpenter’s tools which he always seemed to have in his car somewhere, and busied himself upstairs. He and my husband were evaluating the accident scene. Dad marched half-way down the steps.

“It’s off-kilter!” he announced. “Why companies put real wood in the fronts of drawers and don’t consider the lesser weight in back…..” He went on mumbling and marched back upstairs to modify the chest in some way.

During the next week Dad and my husband put heavy screw-eyes behind every tall piece of furniture we owned, and lashed the pieces with leather strips to screw-eyes in the studding of the walls, especially on the pieces that looked “too heavy to tip over.” If we had been living on the high seas, with the townhouse as a boat, no other pieces of furniture could have fallen.

Alice recovered completely, and we still have Cat. Now he lives in the trunk with the Christmas decorations and only comes out to play once a year. Several months after this adventure Erin Elizabeth arrived, and a couple of years later we moved out of town to Jones Farm—two fields and a creek from Mom and Dad. The kids explored the farm that summer by reenacting the Lewis and Clark Expedition: Alice making detailed drawings and maps, Nicky collecting field diamonds, and Erin leading their German Shepherd/Norwegian Elkhound, Branwyn, while wearing a stretchy gold headband in her hair to hold her teal feather as Sacajawea.


I still write fairy tales Märchen (MARE-KYEN) for and about the kids, and I’ve quit worrying about whether all people can appreciate fairy tales.  After all, I know the real Author of happy endings.