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I was lying in a sodden heap under the weed tree—a silver maple—in our front yard. I had been carrying a cane in my right hand and a working sprinkler in the other when the exposed root of the tree reached up to bite me, sending me down to face plant my left cheek on a bigger exposed root. I had a bruise that took a month to go away, but happily no broken bones.
Ow.
I’d just waved hello to my neighbor across the street, but she didn’t see me fall. I lay at the foot of the tree with the sprinkler—set on one side—dousing me continually with cold water. One phrase was on my mind, “Help, I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”
The other phrase in my mind was, “Where the hell is everybody?” Our street is usually busy with pedestrians, but there were none in sight. Perry was somewhere in the house.
I struggled to sit up to no avail. Are my arms really so weak? I only made myself more vulnerable to the sprinkler.
Shit.
I was finally at the point of calling for help. ”Healp! Healp!” when I realized no one was around. So I started calling “Perry! Perry!”
Inside, Perry was thinking, “Huh! A minute ago, Kristin was right outside the window but now she’s gone. I wonder where she. . .” Finally he heard my weak voice calling his name and came out onto the porch.
Perry hurried to my side and had the brains to grab the sprinkler and throw it aside. I was soaked through and through. What followed was a humiliating lesson on aging and not fully following the PT trainer’s instructions. Perry had to turn me over to my hands and knees and we struggled for quite some time, my hands climbing up his calf, before I was up on my feet.
Shit.
This was the first time I hadn’t been able to get up by myself after a fall. Well, there was the time when I was eight and fell out of a tree. My brothers stood around and stared at me until I got my breath back and then pulled me up by my hands.
It’s a new reality, one I hope to avoid in future.
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