What If You Take a Bow

And fall on your face instead?

Here begins a tale of falling on your face and the aftermath:

So, early in the morning of the Wednesday just before Thanksgiving, I found myself face down on the Living Room carpet. I had actually planned to go to the garage to do laundry. So, after peeling myself off of the floor, I tried to decide if this was an accident or an emergency. Upon finding that I had no visible blood on the ground, I determined that this was an accident and carried the laundry down to the garage to wash — followed closely by my husband who insisted that I needed to see a doctor.

Well! Really! Just because I had a nose bleed, chest pain, and banged up knees! But I finally called the nurse at the clinic who told me “I will not treat you over the phone, you must call 911”. Phooey! So, I called 911 and here they came. In the meantime, I was finding out that I seemed to be quite a bit more sore than I had originally thought. Did I say sore? Well, the last time I remembered feeling like this, I had fallen off of my bike and gotten the wind knocked out of me. So, realizing that I was not Wonder Woman’s cousin, off we went.

Did I say that this snuck up on me? Yes. By the time we got to the emergency room I had to be careful of not turning the air around me blue/green/red/orange — you get the picture. Oh! And I forgot to mention that my Daughter-in-law had (in the meantime) been notified of my fall and was on the way from San Francisco. So, when I finally got back home, fully loaded with pain medication, I found myself surrounded by random acts of kindness. I found myself repeating, like Stella in “Streetcar Named Desire”: “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers” as one by one, one after another person dropped everything to attend to an old lady falling down instead of doing the laundry.

It seemed like during the ensuing week, help was everywhere. Medical help, family help, it was amazing. And just like that, the cranky lady who had to get the laundry done had to sit back and let others do things instead. And gratitude, on top of medication began to do its magical work.

Thanks, everybody!You guys are the greatest!