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 awkwar