Chloe’s favourite game is playing peek-a-boo with her sister’s pyjama bottoms covering her face and neck and she refuses to let the game die until she cracks her head on something while she giggles wildly, running around the house with a pair of fleece pants as a blindfold she fashioned herself. Think kidnapped wife in Fargo making a run for it. She’s fast and unpredictable making my decision to remove the gate at the top of the stairs leading to the basement the scariest I’ve made in a while.
The gate was used when our seven year old was a baby, when our five year old was a baby and now with our sixteen month old. I think we left it up for 3.5 years for Hanna, 2.5 with Ellie and now at the sixteen month mark with baby number three, blindfold and all, down it comes.
Sure we’ve gotten softer, more daring, less smothering with the birth of each child but we’ve also gotten older and that baby gate isn’t as easy to scissor kick over as it once was.
We recognized the error of our ways when Hanna was the only child in kindergarten who would lie on her stomach, turn around backwards and slide down the stairs. That rug burn on her stomach has scarred her for life both emotionally and physically. We left the stair climbing lesson too late and we were not going to make that mistake again.
The gate is a sign of laziness, a sign of weakness. It says, “We’ll teach our kids to climb stairs when we feel like it, like on a Saturday in spring right after we take down the Christmas lights.”
It’s a rite of passage—oh that works on so many levels—oh that too.
It also means we are quickly adding to our collection of items to store or sell as we will never need them again.
Goodbye giant plastic monstrosity caging those able to make it to the basement and forcing those on the upper level to bend and stretch for fifteen minutes before attempting the big kick and straddle lest you lose a finger in the retracting mechanism.
For years, Greg has blamed the gate for an injury to his foot claiming when he comes upstairs for lunch from his basement office, he is forced to mount the gate, pause, replenish his fluids and follow with an awkward swing from the back leg. Somewhere in the dismount, he has developed a fallen arch or a hole in his heel, I stopped listening. At least that’s why he tells me we can no longer go for big long walks.
Operation Gate Removal is now in full effect and so far no injuries. We’re going at this one blindfolds off.
