The Fall

As the old year teetered on the cusp of the new, Stephen and I walked the streets to keep warm in the 20 degree weather as we waited for the fireworks to begin.

I had my arm looped through his, for love and for practicality. It’s been a winter’s winter—snow, ice, cold temperatures—so I was leery of slipping. Hooked on the arm of the man I’ve known forever, I felt grateful and content, safe by his side. 

And then I was on the ground. 

I have fallen before. As a teenager, I slipped on a fork in the cafeteria and smacked my head on a wall. I blacked out and felt strange for a few days. Once on my deck, I tripped over a metal sculpture that had fallen in a windstorm and split the lid of my left eye. And in the woods, how many times have I caught my foot on a rock or root hidden under leaves or slipped on a patch of stealth ice or rolled on a log hidden in a muddy patch. These kinds of falls take forever, slow motion time. I stumble forward for a few steps before gravity takes me and I’m left with a bruised muscle or a scabby knee or a skin-stripped palm. More often than not, I defy gravity and recover my balance before I go down.

But this wasn’t a fall at all. It was a take down. 

One moment, I was keeping up with Stephen’s clip and the next I was flat on the sidewalk. I was mid-sentence and then I was aware of my chest, chin, and nose smacking the pavement. My first thought was surprise and gratitude that I didn’t hit my forehead, the next was that I couldn’t breath. I was flooded with the memory of being punched in the stomach as a kid. Without panic, eyes closed, I rolled myself over and waited for the diaphragm to recover, for the breath to return.

The chin and nose felt huge, like cartoon blowouts. I put the mittened hands over them to see if they were as big as they felt and slowly opened the eyes. A dozen people, bent at the waist, were asking if I was okay. I thought, “I’m scanning the system, give me a sec.”

I asked, Is my shoelace untied? Stephen reported no. I whispered to him, What a fascinating experience. He looked at me like I was crazy. I could feel that everyone, most especially him, needed me to be okay, and I wanted all these strangers to stop staring at me, so I reassured them by sitting up. Some well meaning man grabbed my right arm, which prompted Stephen to grab my left, and they hoisted me up before I was ready. Satisfied, the crowd dispersed. 

My eyes were open, but they were turned inward, looking for information about what was hurt, about what had happened. I turned them outward, toward Stephen. Deer in the headlights. Frozen. Scared. Here I go again, I thought, making him face the undeniable fact that we control nothing.

I sat on the steps of city hall to look at my boots, certain that a shoelace was untied. It was the only explanation for the fulcrumed force with which I went from standing to bodyslamming. But they were tied. Then I noticed that the left shoe’s bunny ear was yanked all the way to the right. I often don’t use the hooks at the top of the ankle when I tie my laces. And then I knew what happened. Left, right, left, right—one of those strides the left foot swung forward and its double-tied bow caught on the hook of the right shoe. 

I didn’t slip on ice. I didn’t catch my toes on a crack in the sidewalk. I didn’t twist my ankle on an uneven patch. The propulsion of my body stopped on a dime; hog-tied, I took myself out. 

We walked to the fireworks and they were amazing. We both said so. I’m not sure it was a better show than any other we’ve seen in our 33 years together, but in counterpoint to the fall, to the stark reminder that this show can all be over in less than a second, we both agreed it was the most spectacular display we’d ever seen. 

Once before, I hit the ground hard. At five, I “flew” from a second story window. I can feel, even now, the earth tremor through my feet, up my spine, out my head. I can feel my parents’ fear as they realized what I’d done. I can feel that terror entering into me, filling me like a balloon, once my own realization dawned that I cannot fly, that I fall, and that this body of mine was unspeakably fragile.

And then there was the crash landing of twins born eight weeks early. A baby in each arm, latched to each breast, pinning me to the earth like a butterfly on a spreading board, my love for them piercing one wing, their need for love piercing the other.

Then there are all the other falls, not of the body, but of the self, in which whatever I am—however profound or pathetic—simply unravels, until all that’s left is a bottomless void of deficient emptiness into which that emptiness—for that is all that’s left of who I am—falls. I fell in this way at 11, in my 20s. Again, at 34, at 46, at 61. 

It seems, falling is all I’ve ever done. And now, Life’s latest attempt to make me land here, once and for all. On this earth! In this body! 

With the tenderest of mercies, Reality slammed me into itself just hard enough to put another crack in my reflex to fly. And with the fiercest of mercies, Reality slammed me into itself just soft enough that I am here still, able to learn from its grace. 

It’s been a time of absorbing its lessons; I’m certain there are more to come. The take down was fast, but its reverberations have rippled through me at a snail’s pace and with great pain, pointing out, like a tireless guide, this cracked rib, that torn tissue, this scraped skin, that bruised muscle. And every place it points, it says, “You are here.”