By Alison Osius Sam was newly 3, and channeling Joe Simpson, the famed mountaineer who disappeared in a fall down a crevasse in Peru. Assumed dead, and with bones broken, Joe came crawling back into basecamp three days later, just hours before his friends were to leave the remote Andes.
It was Thanksgiving and, while visiting my sister Lucy and her small son in Leadville, I showed the movie “Touching the Void” to Sam and my two sons, then 7 and 11. We thought Sam might not get it, but he watched intently, receiving whispered explanations from my other sister, his Aunt Meg.
“He made it!” he shouted at one point, fist pumping.
After that, Sam was Joe.
“Simon! Si-i-imon!” he’d yell from a crawl, invoking the name of Joe’s climbing partner, and the cousins (sharing the role of Simon) would search for him with headlamps, drag him into a pretend tent and cover him up. Teddy, while consenting to use a slightly different version, loved Simon’s words to the third tentmate, Richard, who was so shocked he feared Joe a ghost: Simon barks, “Lift him up, you stupid bastard!”
Simon and Richard had been so certain that Joe was dead, they’d ceremoniously burned his clothes.
Eventually Sam, in character, would ask, “Where are my pants?” then say delightedly, “I’m very mad at you!” The enactments went on all Friday, to the point where Teddy begged us all not to remind Sam of Joe.
Whenever we’d ask Sam, “Are you Sam or Joe?” he was Joe. And he was: wide-eyed and zealous, tiny veins filled with fortitude.
On Saturday, we all came over to our house in Carbondale. The kids set up an actual tent, an early Christmas gift from Aunt Meg, in the living room, and sometimes watched football videos in there and sometimes played Joe. As we handful of adults chatted in the kitchen 20 feet away, in the line of sight, Sam bounded in and out of the little fabric A-frame.
Whack! As he hurled himself through the tent door onto its far side, the wall bowed outward and he smacked his head on a nearby coffee table. He was lifted out wailing, with what looked like a bullet hole in his forehead and blood running down his face.
My husband, Mike, holding Sam and applying pressure to the wound, said, “You’ll be OK, Sam … You’re strong.”
“I’m not strong!” said Sam miserably, teeth chattering.
“You’re Joe.”
“I’m not Joe!”
A friend has just spent the day in the ER with her 2-year-old son, one of a boy-girl twin pair, who put a pea up his nose, the story for me occasioning a rush of memories and thoughts. Most children’s accidents happen at home, on weekends or vacations. Biffs and crashes generally ramp up during holidays, perhaps because there is so much going on.
Crowds, distraction, haste, changes in routine, and unfamiliar surroundings are all elements. Little ones may eat mistletoe, poinsettias, small toys or ornaments. Sleds crash. Teddy once, at 4 or 5, walking right beside me, was …read more
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