The iron and other dangerous things

I used to have this thing with appliances. Maybe it was too many years of fire prevention education in school, or maybe it was a touch of undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. Whatever the case may be, in elementary school and later, into adulthood, I would often find myself lying in bed at night thinking about appliances, specifically the ones that when left turned on, could start a fire. 

We moved a lot growing up. My fear followed me from house to house. 

In one house, my bedroom was in the basement, a room mere feet away from where the ironing board was often kept, left out with the iron on top, its cord dangling loosely over the side. The mere sight of that ironing board on my way to bed would feed a tiny kindling of panic inside. I imagined the cord being magically sucked into the outlet nearby, the iron heating until steaming, then tipping over and igniting the padded ironing board cover. Soon the carpet would be in flames and the fire alarm would go off. I’d be racing around my room in the dark before my fire education would kick in: stay low, put a wet towel over your face to avoid inhaling smoke, touch a closed door with the back of your hand in case it’s hot.

There was another house we lived in, a beautiful two-story yellow farm house with a huge front porch and a back garden. There we went so far as to practice our family’s fire safety route. My sisters and I moved like ninjas, army crawling and slithering down the stairs until we’d tumble out the front door and race down the front steps to meet our parents at the very edge of our big front lawn, an acceptable distance at which to observe the flames and wait for the sirens to sound. 

My parents were like most parents, wanting to reinforce safety and preparedness, educating without alarming, ensuring we knew what to do in the face of a now-easily-imagined emergency.

The problem was, as a child, I was prone to taking things to the next level. Not only would our house burn down but I would have to make a rope out of my bedsheets and fling myself out my second story window into the awaiting dark. Our pets would be stuck inside and a fireman would have to climb up his ladder to save them. I would call for them from the ground so they would know to trust the kind firefighter (as if the heat on their furry behinds were not incentive enough). I would be recognized in a school assembly for my bravery. And maybe the fire department would ask me to ride in the Fourth of July parade, during which I would alternate between my best pageant queen wave and throwing candy for my classmates, who would think of me as the luckiest girl in the world. Besides her burnt-down house, of course.

And when the fire department identified the cause of the flames, they would shake their heads and say, “It was an iron left on. It happens more often than you would think. People really ought to check these things before bed.”

And so I began to do my part in the imaginary drama. My dad would often tuck me in at night. As he left my room, closing the door softly behind him, I would call out, “Is the iron turned off?”

“Yes,” he would whisper.

“Can you check it again?” I would ask.

“Just checked it, it’s off,” came his quick reply.

And so I trusted him, completely. If not because I believed he had checked (as a parent I am all too familiar with saying the comforting things that speed bedtime along), but because now he was complicit. If the iron was not turned off, it would no longer be my fault. I could tell the authorities, “I trusted him to check. I did my part.”

As an adult living alone in my first apartment, I didn’t own an iron. (Way too dangerous, of course). But I routinely checked my oven, my hair straightener, the window locks. By then I’d discovered true crime stories and had added other safety measures to my bedtime repertoire.

Then across the hall came a new neighbor, my now husband, who at 6’4” and 250+ pounds seemed like a good enough safeguard against intruders.

But fire? That was its own undeterred force.

I began spending the night at his apartment, as one does. I would lie in his bed, now unable to do my nightly checks. Naturally, I enlisted my new boyfriend in my madness.

“Did I turn my oven off?” I would whisper.

“Yes,” he’d answer sleepily.

“Are you sure?” I’d inquire into the darkness.

“Do you want me to check?” He’d grudgingly half-offer.

“Maybe.”

And so he would lovingly trudge across the hall, unlock the apartment door he could reach from his own with outstretched arms, and check to see that the oven was indeed off. It always was. 

But now he was complicit. And I could sleep.

There was a third renter on our floor that year, and I cringe to think about the nightly door opening and closing that happened between Mike’s apartment and mine. But I kept that “$325 shoe closet” until we were days away from our wedding. I’m sure Mike was relieved when I turned in my keys, if only because his near nightly sojourn became that much shorter.

I’ve gotten better about appliances. I still check the oven, always off, and the doors, always locked.

My anxiety still sometimes–often–runs rampant, despite the daily regimen of vitamins and pills, the chiropractor visits, therapy, and work outs.

Code words help.

“I’m spiraling,” I tell Mike.

“I know,” he replies calmly before adding, “It’s going to be okay.”

And somehow, my saying so, and him knowing, makes it just that.

I recently confessed to a friend my mind’s ability to conjure up any worst-case scenario with ease. How every childhood adventure feels rife with uncertainty. How when my husband hikes with our daughter aloft his shoulders, I imagine him slipping and her plummeting off into the nearest ravine.

As a mother, my anxious mind spins and spins until my daughter’s laughter pulls me back to the present moment, her elevated perch allowing her to see farther than those of us still on the ground.

The potential for imminent harm still lurks around every corner, in every flammable material and appliance left unmonitored.

But as I age and look back on the best of my memories, I see how they all flirt with danger a bit. Skinny dipping off a lake dock, climbing Colorado peaks as a child, taking a 12–hour bus ride by myself through the jungles of Ecuador, and moving to a southwest town where I didn’t know a soul. 

In those memories I am the complicit one, knowingly accepting each and every possibility with open arms, no longer needing someone to reassure me that everything will be all right.

As for the harm I can prevent (if there is such a thing), I no longer worry about being complicit. I trust that what I’ve said and done, left unsaid and undone, will be enough. And when my anxieties return, I listen for my daughter’s laughter to lift me up and carry me back to the edge of life’s dangers.