A Long Way Down

It is the morning of Thanksgiving Eve in 2018. We’ve moved to Marblehead in May and things are mostly in their places. All was going well until last September. Dan and Liberty were attacked by yellow jackets and Liberty got stung way in the back of her mouth. She reacted first by not being able to eat without pain and then began to develop huge black blisters on her muzzle. We have spent the last months taking her to specialists who are stumped by the blisters and who keep prescribing various drugs, notably, Prednisone. Liberty reacts to the pain by hiding and refusing to eat. I feed her by hand, literally; one mouthful at a time. Eventually, the sting will turn into an abscess which will enter the bone and require surgery on her jaw. We won’t know that for several more months. I do alot of crying.

But this morning I am not in tears because I am looking forward to going to NYC for Thanksgiving at  Linda Russell, our old friend,’s apartment. Linda and I both love to cook and have shared many a feast at Easter and Thanksgiving. I have yet to pack and am still in my animal-print pj’s and slippers. I’m carrying Liberty’s big plastic crate back downstairs. It’s empty, but it is big enough to block my view.

I need to interject that the stair treads in our new house are much more narrow than any in our last residences. Going upstairs, I keep banging my toes, while my heels hang in mid-air. In the future, I will develop a “duck walk” position going downstairs so that my whole foot is on the step. However, on this Thanksgiving Day eve, in the early morning, I can’t look down at my feet because of the big crate I’m holding. So, when my slipper slides, ever so slightly on the top step, I lean backward so as not to fall down the stairs. But my slipper keeps sliding and I sit down, HARD on the landing; so hard that I bounce upward. I hear myself say, “Uh-oh,” as I realize I can’t right myself.

Dan is downstairs, watching me. I see his lips move as he screams, “NO! NO! NO!!!” I can’t let go of the crate or see where I am in space since my view is blocked. I am tumbling over and over the crate down the flight of thirteen wooden steps. It feels like I’m in an industrial-sized dryer with four or five bricks: the fall itself seems slow and dreamlike, punctuated by incredible blows to the head, back and legs. I am furious that I can’t seem to stop the fall nor the pounding I’m getting. I want to hit someone back!

And then…suddenly everything is eerily still. Dan has stopped screaming; he is frozen with terror. I am splayed out on the tile at the foot of the stairs like a rag doll with the crate nowhere in sight. My head rests on the first step. I consider my cervical fusion and tentatively move my head to see if my neck is broken. I arch my back, wiggle my feet and bend my knees. By now, Dan’s white face is bending over me. “Can you move? Is anything broken?” he says.

I’m all good,” I tell him, “except for my right wrist,” which is at an impossible angle. This is unfortunate in so many ways. First, I am exceptionally right-handed. Second, I play the harp, and am a writer and an artist. Third, I have a sick Border Collie to tend. Fourth, tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I won’t be going to New Your after all. Fifth, there will be a greatly reduced staff at any hospital and I will need an orthopedist who works on hands. And last, it is icy outside and I have to somehow make it to the car without fainting and I AM IN MY ANIMAL PJs!

I recalled having a splint in the closet. I asked Dan to fill a bag with ice and the splint, the ice and an Ace bandage. Somehow, we stabilized my wrist in the splint with ice all around the break, securing it  with the Ace. Dan put the dog crate (which was still intact) in the car. He grabbed our coats, and was about to help me up when I yelled, “STOP! You have to get me some jeans. I refuse to go to the ER in my pjs!” I somehow wiggled into the jeans. we collected our dog and stumbled out way out to the car with my coat draped around me like a blanket. 

It truly was my lucky day, because the on-call surgeon at Salem Hospital that day happened to be an hand and wrist surgeon. After fainting in the waiting room, I was taken in for an x-ray which revealed the break was clean and wouldn’t require surgery. Dan and Liberty returned home while I braced myself for a long, painful day. The pain was reduced, somewhat by the fact that my surgeon, being of Irish ancestry, was thoroughly impressed by the fact that I play Celtic harp, which he, with his Boston accent, pronounced, “hop.” 

I was all set to leave when a last doctor came in to do a final questionnaire.  “ So, I hear you broke your wrist falling down some stairs, correct?”

“Yup.”

“And how many stairs was that?”

“All of them.” The doctor looked puzzled. “I didn’t count them; I was tumbling too fast. But I think thirteen. Yeah, I’m pretty sure our staircase has thirteen stairs.”

“You’re telling me you fell down a whole flight of stairs?” Her eyes widened.

“Yup. I’m pretty lucky don’t you think? I mean, all I broke was this,” I said, holding up my newly-made cast. I should have kept my mouth shut. The doctor ordered a slew of scans and x-rays just to make sure something important wasn’t broken. 

Cooking a turkey left handed wasn’t easy, nor were the next few months. But my bone knitted cleanly and all I have to remember the whole incident by is the sexy little curve in my right wrist and a healthy fear of our narrow stairs. I don’t carry large objects up and down and I follow visitors going upstairs for the first time cautioning them, “Now, watch your step. Make sure your whole foot is on. Hold the railing, etc.”

I relate this story not to show how incautious I was, nor to make you more careful on stairs (which you should be,) but to demonstrate that sometimes, even when you act so foolishly or irresponsibly that you deserve to have your neck broken, your life is miraculously goe on. This is not because particular people deserve to be reprieved; it can happen to anyone, even a whole country. Christians call this “grace,” meaning a gift from God that is not necessarily deserved, and yet is freely given.

America is falling downstairs, holding a great bundle which it can’t seem to release. That great bundle is the desire for more than we need; in other words, greed. We have become a country that values wealth more than it does honesty, integrity, empathy and compassion. Worshipping at the feet of wealth, power and ruthlessness, we have lost our footing and are in for a series of extremely painful blows. Half of our country is in mourning. There will be many irrevocable injuries before the fall is over.

But while we are on our way down, while time seems to slow to a crawl, the better to make us feel every obstacle that will hurt and try to break us, we must remember that every falling body eventually comes to rest. Some of us will be broken; undoubtably we will all be injured. But this is not the first time America has lost its footing and recovered. Many times during America’s short history individuals in both the private and political sectors, who aspired to be tyrants have tried (and often achieved) circumventing the laws established by American citizens through the vote. All of these people had their supporters: toadies who wished to gain favor or who feared vengeance, as well as people who have been manipulated by the media to think they personally will profit from supporting an oligarchy.

We need to stop falling before we can evaluate our damage, pick ourselves up and learn to be more careful in the future. But be assured, we will eventually land on solid ground.