It’s February 14th — about the only day in the whole year when taking a fall, or the memory of having taken one, can be considered a good thing.
Why is it, anyway, that we talk about “falling in love”? The image conjures up someone keeling over into some kind of all-encompassing, mushy, welcoming substance; or maybe jumping into a pit filled with big, blue rectangles of foam, as I’ve done once or twice when I’ve taken kids to one of those indoor play places that my husband would never want to pay to enter, like Chuck E. Cheese back when we lived in Connecticut or, more recently, Altitude Trampoline Park here in New Hampshire. In either case, you willingly give up your stability, maintenance of self-control, in order to give yourself over to a new way of being, of moving around in the world. Kids are generally better at this — the physical kind of voluntary falling– but generally you need to be a little older to experience the emotional kind, the “I’m surrendering to this feeling of being overcome by another human being and I hereby relinquish full control over my life, come what may.”
When I was a kid, actually mostly before I was born, my family used to get in the hay every summer. It was a small scale operation, but the activity left indelible memories. With younger boys looking on (in future years they’d be the main crew) here is my brother Mike getting the fragrant, scratchy stuff into the barn down at my grandparents’ place. My father would have been driving the tractor.
When I got old enough, my main job was tramping down the hay in the wagon while everyone else wielded pitchforks. One of the best parts, when the hay was all unloaded, was jumping from a beam in that barn into the cushiony stuff and just lying there for a while, chewing on a few strands, watching the swallows swoop in and out of crevices above me. Later on in life, I realized I held this as a representation of a what a “good fall” feels like: you’ve gained, not lost.
For many of us, it’s probably difficult to remember precisely when we first fell in love, completely fell in love, I mean. Writing about that would take a whole stand-alone essay, would be even more personal than I generally get even in in this space. Right now I’m more interested in staying with the different feelings associated with different kinds of falls. And, in truth, I’m interested because this winter I’ve become more attuned to the range– almost like species of birds out there — of “I was just in possession of my faculties and now I’m splayed out” moments that happen in regular daily life.
I haven’t been on skis yet this winter but expect to, by March anyway. It’s important that I get out there, too, because last winter I went precisely once and took a minor spill — in powder, even — that caused me to do something nasty to a thumb, probably to ligaments. It was embarrassing. The injury seemed like almost nothing at first (surely a few nights of icing would be plenty) but somehow persisted too long, into spring and summer. When I finally made a PT appointment, had an X-ray, I learned that this kind of thing was in fact called “skier’s thumb.” Well, all right then, at least I was in good company.
My goal? To get back to being the person in this picture, at Mt. Sunapee: confident, resilient and, well, younger. OK, maybe the younger part isn’t in the cards.
A couple of weeks ago I did lace up my hockey skates, with no family members and no team either, and that was a lovely afternoon.
Did I fall at all? You bet — a couple of times. Those of us who skate know how sometimes, on almost any glassy surface, you can catch a tiny rut all of a sudden and then, BOOM, you’re down on your cold behind. Some nice woman, who was also there by herself, was trying to get acquainted with me, asking me questions, but I knew I needed to concentrate on where I put my blades down each time, so I became a less extroverted version of myself. Apparently, with her, I had a momentary lapse. The other fall I can’t blame on anyone. With hockey pads on, falling on ice is not much of anything. Without them, well, it can be a little something. That “it could have been worse” feeling creeps in. Next time I go, and there will be a next time, I think I’ll dig out some old equipment.
Driving home that day, with sore knees but high spirits, I heard a voice saying, “Don’t stop, keep going; just accept some caution as a necessary accompaniment to being an older athletic person.”
A week or so later, I went out back with Rocky to do one of my current favorite things: gather kindling for the wood stove. The whole operation was going just fine, as I cracked fallen branches to get them the right lengths, always remembering my father doing the same thing 50 years ago. But then suddenly my legs must have gotten mixed up in the wrong way, and there I was, down in the snow, those same hockey knees smarting again.
For a moment, I felt a little queasy, thinking: “This isn’t exactly the kind of falling I yearn for.” Rocky stood nearby, expressing concern as a dog usually does, which doesn’t include asking, “Can I give you a hand up?” Realizing that I needn’t be in any hurry was a relief, as was imagining that I was back in the old barn, sinking into the hay to my heart’s content.
Walking back up to the house eventually, with a bag full of goods, I was over it. You live, you love; you fall, you try to take care of yourself as best you can. But you don’t stop moving, you don’t stop allowing yourself to be just a bit vulnerable, because then you’d be at a standstill.