the day we almost killed our son

In honor of my sister's dramatic story telling, I'd like to tell my own dramatic story about how our son was almost crushed to death and I saved him with sheer brute mama-strength.

Recently our garage door decided to stop opening.  I pushed the button in the garage so I could push Sammy out in his stroller for a little walk.  The door opened about three inches, closed, then opened three inches again and stopped.  After trying this a few more times, I gave up, hauled my son, who was already strapped in his stroller, up the stairs, then back down the outside stairs where I think too a pathetically short stroll that was probably not worth the effort.

Later that evening my husband and I decided to investigate and see if it would be a simple fix.  I pulled the rip cord on the door which made it close the three inches, but then, nothing.

Since we are (one of the 36) people in America that actually use our garage to store our cars, we realized we needed to get the door open so I could pull my car out.  Since the cord is pulled on the door, it should just pull right up and open manually.

Keeping this in mind, my husband starts lifting...and it doesn't budge.  It's a two person job.

At this time Sam is happily exploring the garage, not paying much attention to us. 

My husband's knee is somewhat injured from a running incident, so he decides to pull on the rip cord and I'll use the handle at the base of the door.  We'll get the door open, get the car out, and worry about fixing the door later!

We begin pulling the heavy two-car garage door up and it's working--the two of us are doing it!  However, there are three of us in the garage.  Sam sees his escape and starts going under the gap in the garage door.  My husband, with his safety instincts on the tip of his tongue yells to Sam to stop and come back.  Well, instead of our 15 month old heeding his commands, he instead becomes very frightened and just stops dead center under the door and begins to cry--petrified with fear.

So there we were, using all of our muscles to hold this door three feet from the ground, with our toddler frozen underneath the suspended door.

My mama bear instincts kick into gear.  I realize I have three choices:  1. let my son be crushed under the weight of the garage door  2.  hold the garage door up long enough for Sam to stop crying and either come in the garage or out of the garage (in which case I could run out the front door and get him) or 3. I could life up the garage door.

With all my strength I take a deep breath and hoist the door up and throw it up over my head like a heavy-weight champion!  And it works!  The door is up!

Lee J holds the door (which is now at its resting place at the top) while I scoop up my terrified son.  We proceeded to put him in his stroller (which was still outside from our earlier walk) and then I pulled my car out and lowered the garage door slowly closed until it is repaired a few days later.

So there you have it.  The day I saved my son's life (after being one of the ones
to put it in danger in the first place!)