Grace

It’s not pleasant to fall as an adult. Let me just say that at the outset. I have tripped a few times over the past few years, say over a curb or uneven sidewalk, and gone to the ground, grazing my hands and knees on gritty concrete, the raw sting an admonishment to watch what the hell I’m doing. Mostly, my ego is the thing that takes the worst beating.

Not now. Now that I know what it is to dive head first down concrete steps, hands full so I take the brunt of it with my face? Now I have no ego. I am washed clean of it by blood and gravel and more blood and fear and picking myself up to walk crying down a busy street (no cars stopping, not even though my two hands were pooled with blood), turning right, walking up that street toward friendly neighbors’, watching them try to figure out who I was though they know me quite well, then everyone, more neighbors, some I know, some I don’t, rushing to lie me down, to run for ice and wash cloths and clean water and shushing and cooing and cleaning and touching, and me crying, sobbing, trying to feel with my tongue if my teeth were all there. “I’m sorry,” I kept saying, and they’d shush me some more. “Thank you,” I kept saying, and I’ve never meant it as much.

Thank you world. Thank you for kind people, for resilient bones (women, take your calcium), for efficient funny ER nurses, and for these ugly abrasions and contusions that mean I am alive, and that I have survived everything, so far, that life has thrown at me.

Sometimes Things Go Wrong

Sometimes, they go terribly wrong. The worst thing happens. And it's the holidays, which somehow weights bad news with heavier lead than in, say, summer, or spring. Maybe it's because we know we will think forevermore, "Thanksgiving = Mom dying," or "Christmas was when that drunk driver ruined our lives."

My mom died 21 years ago, not on any holiday. I've not been in a horrific car accident this month, nor has anyone I know. But something has gone wrong, terribly wrong, and it's private. The thing that was never supposed to happen did, as happens in life, and I'm old enough to know that, well, shit happens. To all of us. At any moment. In spite of holidays.

This isn't a plea for sympathy or prayers. This is a statement of fact, and I say it only because I know that sometimes things go wrong for you, too. At the worst possible time. The thing that was never going to happen didn't care that you ate green leafy vegetables or sprinkled salt on the icy sidewalk or sent your son to the best doctor in the city. It happened anyway.

So let us just stand together silently, those of us with these wrong things happening, and be solid in our conviction: This is a part of my life, just as happiness and good events are. It does not change who I am even though it makes me horribly sad or angry or frightened. I'll curse and cry and mope and wallow, and I'll get through it. I will still find joy in life, take breaks from awfulness, and ask for help and support and love and talking and forgetting when I need to.

And I'll notice all the things going right all around me. Every day.