The Fall

Last week I fell over in our back yard. One minute I was climbing over the little fence that stops my marauding chooks from demolishing the garden beds, the next I was sprawled on the brown summer grass, ready for a game of dead ants.


I’d been planting pittosporums and native grasses in our newly mulched back corner, feeling chuffed I’d worked a miracle in enlisting help from my reluctant teenage son and that what had been the messiest part of our garden was starting to look aesthetically very pleasing. When we’d nearly done, I stepped over the fence to fetch the rake so we could smooth out the mulch and finish up. But my foot caught in the wire mesh.

As soon as my shoe hooked the top of the wire, I knew the fall would be a bad one.

And though the whole sorry event was over in an instant, that instant seemed interminable. As if it were happening in slow motion…

Nothing can stop this. I don’t have time to waggle my foot out. I’m already on my way down and I’m on a really awkward angle. Samuel – you’re looking the wrong way! By the time I call out and by the time you turn your head it will be too late. I need Superman. No. I need Spiderman. No, I need Edward Cullen! The back yard is on a slope. Not only am I going to fall over, I’m going to fall DOWN THE HILL – nursery rhyme style. DAMN. This is so not fair. I’ve got a list of things to do, all beautifully written out in coloured pen and I’ve already had a nasty energy-depleting cold. In summer. On the holidays. I don’t need this. There’s no way on earth I’m going to be able to brace myself in time – one foot’s stuck in the wire loop at the top of the fence and the other one is committed to heading down the hill. It’s going to be bad. Very bad. Just like when I sat in the hammock last year and did a backward somersault onto the deck. Such a shock! And totally unplanned. Noooooooooooooo!

I’d expected to land with a thud. On my front, arms extended, as if I’d tried to dive into the lawn. And I’d expected to lie there, winded, wondering if my spinal cord had been severed during the awful, jarring impact. So I was surprised to find myself looking up into the gumtree when I finally hit the ground.

I couldn’t remember the thud at all. I’d missed a raised tree stump by centimetres and surprisingly, my head had not even come close to brushing the grass, let alone touching the ground.

Seconds after I crashed to earth, Samuel was standing over me, his lanky teenage frame stretching up into the sky above. I can’t remember him asking if I was alright. I just remember his question, Do you want to stay there for a while or do you want to get straight up? sounding ridiculously humorous as it penetrated my fog of shock. In my mind I answered him: Sure, I don’t often get to view the garden from this angle. I might meditate here for a while, gaze up into this gumtree, plan a different take on life.

It was only when I extended my right arm for him to help me up that I realised it hurt so much we’d need to use the left one and that my back didn’t hurt at all.

For the next few days, my arm throbbed, and a whacking great bruise came out just below my elbow.

And that was the worst of it.

Amazing.