Side Streets, Kimbra Traynor Herb, 845 words
Never a Shrinking Violet
By Kimbra Traynor Herb
IPS Features
One of the things I have always prided myself upon is being strong. Emotionally strong, spiritually strong, and yes; I'll say it: physically strong. I have never been one of those wilting daisy kind of chicks who shy away from physical labor. Since the beginning of our marriage, 100% of the lawn work has been my responsibility, and one that I enjoy.
I move furniture
upon a whim, and lug large trees and shrubs from the greenhouse to my yard for
planting. Imagine my shock when I discovered last night that I am indeed......
(it pains me to say it)....... weak.
I found out
about my physical shortcomings when we decided to get rid of our old upright
piano in favor of my Grandma's smaller piano. When a friend of mine expressed an
interest in having our old piano, I was thrilled, but warned, "It is very,
very HEAVY! I bet it weighs at least a thousand pounds!"
Of course I
thought I was exaggerating when I told her that...... it was only later that I
was told that for once- I wasn't. Not that I actually HELPED in any way in
the moving of the old upright; it took six strong men to get that old behemoth
down the front porch stairs and into the truck. From my vantage point, it didn't
look so difficult.
"Did you
tell me this thing weighs a thousand pounds?" My friend's hubby shouted, as
he grunted the beast down the stairs, "Yep!" I said,
waiting for the punchline...... as in.....'you silly girl, you way overestimated
it..... this thing is not nearly that heavy.'
Instead, he
replied, "I'd say closer to a ton! This thing is ridiculous!" Gosh, I
thought to myself, some men can be such babies. How hard could it be to move a
simple piano?
I found out last
night when we struggled to get my Grandma's piano back up those same front porch
steps. This time, instead of six men, there were three of us, my husband, my
oldest son, and myself..... the aforementioned strongest woman on earth (or so I
thought). My middle son, who looks like he should be strappingly strong,
and who is deceivingly large, was delegated to the front door holding duty after
it was established that I was most likely the candidate to be the third
strongest in the family.
I think a part
of me balked at being given billing behind my eldest, who will turn fourteen
this summer, but secretly I knew that I was lucky to have been chosen over my
second son who most likely WAS stronger than me by now.
My hubby
orchestrated the whole process. "I am going to count to three," he
said, "and when I do, you to are going to lift the piano up one step while
I push from the bottom." (My son and I were positioned at the top of the
piano and would be lifting it up while my husband push from below.)
"Piece o'
cake!" I boasted, ready to lift that puppy straight up all eight stairs
single handedly.
"Okay!"
My husband shouted, "One, two, three...... LIFT!....... I said, LIFT......
are you lifting?!"
Well, I could
have answered him if I had any voice at all. However, the strain of lifting this
MILLION pound object was way too much for me. I was pulling with all my might; I
could feel things threatening to burst from within me..... and NOTHING. Finally,
my son to my right gave a great heave and managed on his own to position the
piano one step closer to my living room.
HOLY BEETHOVEN!
We continued
like that for the next seven steps, and by this time it was quite obvious that I
was, literally, not pulling my own load. Shamed and exhausted, I managed to
question whether this piano was indeed quite heavier than the original
piano; it seemed to be ever so much more difficult to position than the first
one.
"Are you
kidding, Mom?" My son asked. "This one is as light as feather compared
to the other one!"
Talk about
coming screeching back to earth. My delusion that I was some kind of a modern
day Viking woman came to a halt as I tried to digest the fact that THIS piano,
the one that I COULDN'T BUDGE, was in fact, lighter than the one I had mocked
the men for having difficulty with the previous day.
Ahhhhhh reality.
So I was, in fact, a pitiful little weakling...... a mambly pambly girly girl
with no muscles to speak of, and no claim to glory on this dark humid evening. I
was not strong; I was weak, and everyone in my family knew it.
"Don't
worry, Mom," my youngest son, age five, comforted. "You are still
stronger than me."
"Hey."
I said, following my two strong men into the house behind the piano. "That
probably won't be true for very much longer. Next time," I told my middle
son, "I'll hold the door."