Mother on the Roof

This morning, before breakfast, my two year old locked himself in his room. It happened this way.  My daughters had just headed to their dressing room and were soon going to need help. I gathered up a basket of folded laundry, and walked my little one to the boys' bedroom. I left him with his older brother.  My youngest was driving his toy cars while my oldest was tasked with making his own bed.

I headed over to put away my girls' laundry so as to be handy when my four year old needed help. She still has trouble taking off her shirts and needs help to brush and arrange her hair. Sometimes her older sister needs help with her hair too. As soon as I had helped my youngest daughter, I headed over to get my little one dressed. What I found was a locked door. 

My oldest boy was downstairs at the computer. As I saw later, he had hurriedly thrown his comforter over the rest of his poorly pulled up bedding in order to sloppily make his bed. Then he bolted for the laptop to squeeze in some more computer programming. Meanwhile, my little man, either accidentally or otherwise, locked the door. This put me in a bit of a pickle. You see, we have old fashioned rim lock sets. They look like this from the outside. 

No one has ever bothered to drill out the lock holes, not even me. I decided doing so was pointless. Those holes are for the skeleton keys, lever keys, bit keys, or barrel keys that unlock the bolts. I don't have any of those keys. Besides, my boy didn't lock the dead bolt. That would have required a key on his side. What he did, was to flip the privacy latch at the top. You can see the brass latch at the top of the cast iron plate to the left. 

This isn't the first time someone has been locked out of a room. We were locked out of our bedroom on our last wedding anniversary. Someone had pushed the privacy latch up, but not all the way over. Then, when the door was shut, the impact made the latch slip into the lock position. We slept in the living room that night, as initial attempts at getting in were unsuccessful and it was late. 

The next day I unscrewed the knob, removed the shaft, bent a hanger, inserted the hanger through the hole for the shaft, and managed after much effort and time, to flip the latch back. Then I replaced the shaft and knob and opened the door. I promptly unlocked a window, and ever since have left a window unlocked in every room. 

I haven't seen a way around this problem, other than to get new lock sets, which would be expensive. Also, the doors would then all need to be drilled for a standard lock set, and they would also be marred, as the rim sets are attached to the face of the door. Other rim sets operate in the same fashion, so getting different face-mounting sets are not an option either. Taping the latches might help, but might not, and would certainly muck up the doors and be unsightly. 

Today, after explaining umpteen times to my small child how to unlatch the door, and his feigned lack of understanding, I decided that I had to go in through the window to unlock the door. He just did not seem to want to let me in. And a two year old is not to be left alone in a room. The damage a child that age is capable of in a short amount of time is astounding. Plus, and most importantly, he was a danger to himself.

After stationing an older child outside the door to listen and to keep him busy conversing, I got out our step ladder, thinking that I would climb onto the roof and through the window. It was a few feet short of the lowest part of our roof. I decided that it was too dangerous to teeter on the top of a ladder as I scrambled up. I considered calling a neighbor for a longer ladder, but time was of the essence, and I wasn't even sure either of my new neighbors had a tall ladder handy. I considered calling the fire dept., but I know from a previous experience with a neighbor at our old home who had set his yard on fire, that the volunteer fire departments are slow in arriving. So instead, I climbed out of the bathroom window next to his room, scooted crabwise across the steep gambrel roof to his unlocked window, raised the screen, and climbed in to save the day. 

I had started to fast today, but after that experience, I decided not to continue. If the door-locking episode had happened later in the day, I might have been too shaky to accomplish the required climbing feat or my thinking might have been too foggy to find an expeditious solution to the problem at hand. Things could have gotten ugly or complicated instead of being quickly resolved. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for self-discipline. For example, I haven't been using facebook for all of Lent. And I haven't had a drop of coffee. Going without "extras" and fasting from things we need for short periods of time (like food) are valuable spiritual tools that Catholics like myself are especially focused on during Lent. They help us to be more mindful of our weakness, and therefore, more aware of our dependence upon God. They help us to continually turn our hearts to Him throughout the day. The willing suffering also helps us to unite ourselves in a small way to Christ's sacrifice. And that suffering represents our solidarity with Jesus and with His Church. In our over-consuming society, I think it is especially important to practice doing with less. But the main undercurrent for why I fast is love. It's not very loving to compromise my faculties and cause risk to the family God has blessed me with. So today I will find different tools, some other spiritual exercises in which to partake to show my love. 

I think I'll be sure to send the money to that family in need that I should have sent two weeks ago. I think I'll send a note to a friend whose husband recently died. I've been thinking of her a lot and praying for her and her children too. And instead of giving my hunger to God as a little gift, I'll give Him my gratefulness for my impish son, for my body that was able to free him from his room, for my ability to help a friend in need, for my husband, and for the fact that I have food to give up- even if I'm not going to give it up today. Oh, and as for the the ladder I got out, I'll be using it to take down the last 3 strands of Christmas lights that are still strung along the back gutters.