After MANY (too many) years of baton twirling, modeling and gymnastics in my youth and early teens, you would think I might be much more graceful than I really am. I think I am fooled most of the time as well! A week ago today, I was having an otherwise fantastic and easy going day with Elijah.
We got up, throw on clothing, grabbed a nibble of food and headed out to the bus stop. We left William in bed, snoring, on his day off. We had a lovely bus ride down the hill to the Children’s Museum and ran around there for a few hours. It came time to leave. Everything went as it usually does. Along the path we go towards our bus stop and all of a sudden E trips and falls. No huge deal…he scrapes his finger and is a bit shaken, but otherwise ‘alright’. We continue down the path, if only a little slower maybe. We arrive at the curb and prepare to cross the street.
“You have to carry me, because I can’t run across the street, because of my finger.”
“You don’t have to run.”
“But, we’ll miss the bus if I don’t run”
“Okay, I’ll carry you. Let’s go”
Bag on right shoulder, camera around left wrist, child on left hip with both arms around him. Walking, normally and not running. For some unknown reason ‘they’ decided that it was a ‘good’ idea to place a man-hole right in the middle of the street, so that I could trip on it — damn ‘them’.
I tripped and in what seemed like a fraction of a nanosecond, we were both sprawled out across the asphalt. I fell on top of E…all 250lbs of my fluffy ass. My chest slammed into his right hip bone. I fractured two, possibly three ribs and E bruised his hip. It felt like we laid in the street for hours, but I know it was maybe a second before I jumped up (cried out a wounded animal sound because I felt my ribs) and dragged our sorry selves out of the street.
We hobbled over to a bench. I assessed the kid, who was still clutching his scrapped finger. Scrape on his cheekbone, knees looked alright and he could walk. I sat up straight and was convinced by the pain that I had actually broken myself. However, I could walk and so could he and I knew that I hadn’t punctured a lung.
We made it to our bus stop and got on the first bus that I saw headed to downtown near the little grocery store we were on our way to before returning home. I was not going to go through such an ordeal and not have the bread, grapes and mushrooms when I made it home. Fantastically, this little grocery store (Rosebud) is more than a nice little place where people downtown can run in and stop for some basics and so that the people living in the apartments above it can have easy access to food…no, this little grocery store is right around the corner from my favorite bar downtown.
As everyone knows, the first thing you do when you have had a really bad fall is to NOT find medical help, but to sit yourself and your child down at the bar and have a beer. Thankfully, we are practically family it seems with the manager and staff, so it was no big deal for us to walk in 45 minutes before they were actually open and request a band aid & water for E and a beer for myself. I relayed our adventure, got sympathy faces and free beer. After pulling myself together and knowing for sure that I hadn’t punctured a lung (somethings you can easily figure out), we tipped, hugged and thanked our Backstage family. Off to the grocery store around the corner and then to home.
When we got home, William decided that I was just trying to make him feel bad for sleeping all day! If I want someone to feel bad, I need not go and break myself!
After a week of soreness and pain…I am still sore and still have pain! Elijah is back to ‘normal’ and advises that we not try all that again! I assume that sometime over the next two or three weeks I might feel like I am not ripping apart when I bend over to pick something up off the floor or reach up to grab something from the cabinet.
Yeah, let’s not try all that again.
