Standing at the Top of the Stairs

Excerpt

Our house, before remodeling, had a spiral stair case that wound down from the den/kitchen/dining room level to a hall on the lower bedroom level. The stair case was anything but fancy, was probably unsafe and was certainly not built to any residential construction code. Our grandchildren’s ages at that time ranged from barely a teenager to barely a toddler but they all loved the stairs. In fact, when we remodeled the house, one, totally ignored, request from virtually every grandchild was to “be certain to keep the stairs.” The steps were two-inch thick boards that were about three inches wide where the board attached to a central pole and were about 12 inches wide where the board joined the wall. The spiral was fairly tight and there were no backs to any of the steps and an open space on one side of the staircase. The open space was more or less a “hole” between the staircase and the nearest wall. Ascending the stairs required entering the hole, grasping the central pole and carefully moving up the steps while rotating in a cork screw fashion. My mother refused to ascend or descend the stairs, a process that could be avoided by going outside and walking through the yard. The door at the top of the stairs was a folding contraption that slid from right to left (if you were descending) and latched with difficulty. …