Looking out my Backdoor: Drop the paint bucket

One of my Montana classmates, who has chronic problems with her back, sometimes to the point she cannot walk, told us the story of what happened a several years ago that caused her to resort to hanging onto her walker this week.

Cheryl was on a ladder painting the eaves of a new-built garden shed. She needed to move the ladder, started down, slipped and landed on her bottom, broke her tailbone and crushed several vertebrae, but, by golly, she hung onto the paint bucket.

Does this sound familiar?

Paint splattered everywhere, changing the color of flowers on the bushes, her clothing, the ground. That’s not the point. Had Cheryl dropped the bucket and grabbed the ladder, she undoubtedly would have saved herself years of excruciating pain. But, her hand gripped the bale of the pail, all the way to the ground.

Are you relating to this?

When my friend told us the story, I immediately recalled several of my own. If you are of a certain age, raised in eastern Montana, no doubt you are nodding your head and reliving your own stories.

It’s a cultural thing. We were taught this. We were taught, not with words, but in more subtle ways, or sometimes, in some families, not so subtle ways, that things were more important than our bodies. Stuff, property, inanimate objects were more important than our human selves.

You might fall from a ladder and break bones, but you don’t drop the tools. You might get run over and gored but you don’t let the bull out the gate that might lead him to the highway. You might skip Christmas, birthdays and meals, but you hang onto the homestead. Extreme stories? You tell me.

When I was 8 years old, helping my cousin wash dishes, I broke the lid on a candy dish. Shirley’s first words, “That was a wedding present. Mom’s going to kill you.”

Sobbing all the way, I managed to get to the barn where my Aunt Mary was helping with the milking. It was all I could do to drag the words out of my mouth, to tell my Aunt what I had done, sobbing so hard that my stomach muscles ached.

My Aunt hugged me and said the dish wasn’t that important. Years later, when she asked if I’d like any keepsakes from her home, please choose anything, I took the candy dish.

We lived down a mile-long gumbo lane. I ended in the ditch more than once. “Is the car damaged” Since I was standing there telling Dad I’d slid the car in the ditch, driving too slowly, he told me, I suppose it was obvious I wasn’t hurt. Still, a smidgeon of sympathy would not have gone wrong.

The most terrifying job Dad ever put me on, unpaid, of course, was driving the D-2 Cat while cleaning drain ditches. I lived through it. My muscles still tense up just remembering, afraid to the point of nausea that I might slip a track and land the Cat in the bottom of the ditch.

If you think I’m exaggerating the effects of growing up in a culture of things, stuff, property, being more important than people, go park on a street near a crosswalk and just watch a while. You will notice that anybody over 45 years old limps or shuffles or shows some signs of physical abuse. We do to ourselves as we were taught.

When my own children broke anything, I don’t care how precious it might have been before it was dropped, slipped or crashed, my first words to them were these, “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I wish I could go back and redo a lot of things with my kids, I messed them up regularly, but I got that one right. I hope I never gave my children a hint of an idea that any kind of “stuff” was more valuable to me than they were.

It may be that you have no more business than I do climbing up a ladder to paint. However, if you climb up and you start to slip, if you remember nothing else, “Drop the paint bucket.”

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Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at http://montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com/. Email [email protected].