Who’d have figured falling on one’s keister would be a thought-provoking event?  Pratfall, perhaps, but thought-provoking?

Let alone email and blog-fodder about which to write…

I received a lovely note from Ruth who expressed concern about my fall.  I told her:

…don't worry, it's just my pride that's bruised.  Another 24 hours of ibuprofen and I'll be feisty as ever.  It was an oddly singular experience, though.  I've fallen on these same stairs before a couple times in the thirteen years I've lived here, but this wasn't anything like the previous occasions.  I can't really remember how I did it.  I'm sure it was my silly clogs, the sticky tread-like soles catching on the stair carpeting.  But the thing that stands out in my mind, crystalline-clear, is my fear: what about my kids?  It hurt like a sonofab*tch, but I was more worried about my kids seeing me like that, more concerned about their panic about getting me up off the stairs.  Amazing how odd happenstance can give one gifts of rare clarity like that; it wasn't about me, it was all about my kids.  I haven't been that worried about them since I gave birth -- kind of transcended the pain.  We could do anything, I guess, walk through fire, if we had that much clarity of vision and values.

I could have, would have lain there on the stairs for another fifteen or twenty minutes, catching my breath, indulging my invalid self, had it not been for the worry in their little faces hovering above me, the fearful tone in their voices.  My arm may have been wrenched less by catching the handrail on the way down, than by pulling my entire weight to my feet one-armed.  I wasn’t going to lay there one more second longer than absolutely necessary and leave them in anxious suspense.

I guess I’d forgotten the depth of my capacity to conquer.

May you have a singular – yet pain-free! -- event to remind you of your own strengths, if you've forgotten them, too.

9:40:39 PM    comment []

This will sound really stupid, the reason for not posting much over the last 24 hours.

I’m sure it looked pretty stupid too, when it happened.

I fell down the stairs yesterday and landed on my *ss.

Well, kind of…my tailbone took the brunt of it, with my back getting twisted and my arm wrenched while trying to catch myself mid-fall.  I managed to rotate 180 degrees, so that I landed back down instead of face down, while reaching out and grabbing the handrail at the same time.

My poor kids were freaked out when they heard me yell; they peered down the basement stairwell, panic in their faces, asking each other and me whether they should call 911.

I knocked the wind out of myself, so I had difficulty answering right away.  Poor things – I choked out NO and they waited, perched like little birds at the top of the stairs until I pried my body off the steps.

Anyhow, no sympathy, please.  It was carelessness on my part, I was moving too fast at the time.

And now my *ss hurts to sit and write for any length of time.

I’m choking out comments in blogs, although longer ones take a couple tenative passes.  A good post here might take a bit longer.  Tomorrow should be better, especially if I keep up the ibuprofen. 

You know, I never really thought much before about the care and maintenance of my backside or that it would ever become an essential component to my writing to have a healthy *ss.

Heh.  Guess I got a cosmic kick in mine to ponder upon it.

11:29:39 AM    comment []