It seems that every time I turn around, something else has gone wrong.

The gone-wrong thing with the most seniority is the latch mechanism for the storm door on our front porch. Something inside failed, probably a spring. I ordered a new mechanism last summer. The company charged our credit card, but so far I have not seen a new latch mechanism. A few months ago I checked, and they blamed the pandemic. I checked again a few weeks ago, but apparently the pandemic has hindered their ability even to respond to customers.

More recently our dryer started making a loud and terrible screech when we asked it to dry some clothes. I did a little searching online and found some suggestions. I pulled it out, which is a major job since it’s the top of a stacked unit, and it’s pushed back into a small closet off our kitchen. I opened the back and lubricated a tensioner, then I put it back together. When I turned it on, there was no screech. I wasn’t confident that a little oil would solve the problem, so I didn’t push the washer and dryer all the way back into their lair. I also ordered a complete replacement set for all its rollers. That was a good thing, since after a few loads, the front rollers began to make a new and more concerning noise. It runs, but it complains constantly and loudly. I think I hear a little screeching, too. My replacement parts have not come yet.

And, then there was the failed control board in our dishwasher. I repaired that a while ago, and it still works. Then the microwave failed, and I had to replace it. These two appliances were about four years old, not old enough to fail. But they did.

I can’t really call Leah’s back problem a failure, but I suppose in some ways it was. She had a laminectomy on December 21 to try to alleviate the nerve pain that was shooting down her left leg. She is still having pain, two months later. I don’t know how much of that is the result of her not following the post-op instructions (Don’t bend, lean, or twist!). Not all back surgeries are successful. So far, hers has not been.

The most recent problem may or may not be related to her back condition. A few days ago we were talking in the kitchen, standing on either side of the island table in the middle of the kitchen, when she took a half step backwards, and then fell like a cut tree. She sat down in the floor really hard, and ended up leaning against the kitchen cabinet under the sink. We got her back onto her feet, and she seemed OK.

Then I noticed that one of the cabinet doors was crooked. She had fallen back and hit her head on the door. It tore one hinge out of the frame, bent the other hinge, and broke part of the door frame itself. A day or so later I noticed a big, dark bruise on her bottom. The scariest part was the possibility of having done some serious harm to her back, but so far that seems not to have happened.

As it turns out, breaking the door was lucky for her. The door took most of the force of the impact, all of which would have been absorbed by her head had she hit something harder. If she had been standing one pace further back, her head might well have hit the edge of the counter top, and that could have been very serious, indeed.

I ordered two new hinges for the cabinet door last week. They came Saturday. On Monday I put the new hinges on and rehung the door. Here it is, halfway done.

I needed everything you see on the table, including the paper towel with a few blood stains. Sticking a sharp new chisel into your palm might not seem to be a likely way to injure yourself, but I managed.

I had to drill out the screw that held the bottom hinge to the cabinet frame because it broke off from the impact. Then I had to fill that hole with epoxy so I could put a new screw in.

So far the cabinet repair seems to be successful. I just wish Leah’s recovery could be that successful.

When I was just a boy, back in 1961, my parents took me and my brother out of public schools and enrolled us in Darlington School, a private boys’ prep school in Rome. Thinking back, I realize it was because Rome schools were just starting to be integrated. I think they were afraid there would be violence, as there had been in other Southern towns. That didn’t happen, fortunately, but we still went to Darlington.

Darlington was not a segregation academy like so many that appeared in the South in those days. However, in addition to being all boys, it was also all white.

It was founded in 1905, and had a pretty decent reputation for academics. The public schools did not, so Darlington insisted that every student that started the fall had to go to summer school to make sure they were ready for sixth grade.

In those days, Darlington affected a sort of English-inspired terminology. Grades six through eight were the Lower Forms, and nine through twelve were the Upper Forms. I was in the first class to go through all three years of the Lower Forms in the brand-new Junior School. My brother Henry started in ninth grade in the Upper Forms.

I was not a great student. OK, but not great. I was not a happy student, either. I was a little uncooperative in some ways, and oblivious to most of what was going on around me. I made my way through the Junior School, then on to High School, just middling along. And then, somehow, I started doing better. I was surprised a few years ago when Henry was recording his memories after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, when he mentioned that he noticed when I started doing better in school. He also mentioned that I had been, as I mentioned before, uncooperative in some ways. I had no idea that anyone could possibly have noticed.

I ended up pretty close to the top of my class, below a couple of guys who thoroughly deserved to be ranked higher than me.

Those years were probably formative for me, although I persisted in being oblivious to a lot of that. It was easy to be submerged in a culture where academics were valued as a matter of course, and everyone was expected to go to college. I never studied as hard in three different colleges as I did at Darlington. There was no academic shock when I started college. It was only in graduate school that courses became harder than at Darlington.

After I left Darlington, I didn’t maintain any kind of contact with the school or my classmates, other than my friend Dan, Leah’s brother. I ran a race on the cross country course at my 15^th class reunion, and a few years later I took some books that a friend was disposing of to the new school library. But for the most part, Darlington has been a part of my past that I didn’t think about or miss.

I have seldom seen anyone I knew from Darlington. I saw one of my favorite teachers, Gordon Neville, at a cross country meet that my nephew ran in sometime in the ’90’s. I saw another teacher at the barber shop about 20 years ago.

And then on Wednesday I saw one of my old teachers in the parking lot at Lowes. I walked up to his car and he rolled down the window. It was history teacher Jack Summerbell. His hair was thinning and gray, and his eyebrows were wild and white, but it was still him. We spoke for a few minutes. Neither of us had been back to Darlington for years. He said the school was unrecognizable. For some reason a few days earlier I had GoogleEarthed Darlington, and I knew what he meant. The old buildings from my day looked small and lost among all the new buildings. What had been open, grassy fields were home to dormitories. My brand-new Junior School had been demolished and replaced with new buildings. Nothing looked the same.

And Gordon Neville died last year from Alzheimers.

In fact, almost all the teachers I knew at Darlington are dead now.

It has been nearly 53 years since I graduated from Darlington. I do not want to see it now. I prefer to remember it as it was; all the teachers are young, and so am I.

Postscript

Unfortunately, in the last few years Darlington has been most widely known because of sexual abuse accusations against at least one teacher. The accusations that ended up in various news reports were about a teacher who came after I graduated. One of the worst things I learned is that a few students reported to school officials that they had been molested, but the officials did nothing. I have to wonder whether anything like that went on when I was there. As I said, I was oblivious to a lot of things, and also pretty naive. It could easily have happened, and I might never have been aware.

A lawsuit was filed a few years ago. I don’t know its status today.