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LJI Week 1: The Stairs
Oct. 5th, 2018 06:51 pmThis is my entry for LJ Idol, Week 1. The topic is: ""=It's hard to beat a person who never gives up"
When I was a baby, my grandmother dropped me down a flight of stairs. I survived, remarkably unscathed. Ever since then, the stairs have been trying to finish the job.
In the most recent attempt, stairs tripped me on my way to my Cardio Kickboxing class. I pitched forward, falling upwards, catching myself with my forearms. From that instance, I acquired a blue-black line across my left shin, from the edge of the stair, as well as a resurgence of tenderness in my right wrist, already sore from defeating a similar attempt on concrete steps at my apartment complex, this past spring.
My husband tells me to be careful, if not for him than for the sake of our 8-year-old son, KFP. I nod as if there's anything I can do, when I know better. That last time I fell? That was me being careful. I swear I was even looking at my feet when it happened. The stairs don't care.
Careful or not, I’ve tripped the stairs fantastic many times. Some falls have been more spectacular than others. I nearly lost a toenail, twisting in loose shoes and sliding down several steps while on -- wait for it -- the first day of a weeklong family vacation. Nowadays I remember that week as the last time my brother's, my sister's and my family spent time with my Mom, her partner and my Dad, just a year before Mom died. In those days, I thought of the vacation as the Week of the Blackened Toenail. But as Mom always said about vacation mishaps, “At least we’ll have stories to tell later.”
Stories. Like stairs. She told me one once, about a noise she heard bumping down the attic stairs in her childhood home, built by her grandfather in coal country. The sound bump, bump, bumped down the stairs then crashed into the door. When she opened that door, she saw -- nothing. Perhaps, she suggested in breathy tones, the noise belonged to the spirit of her cousin, who had fallen down the steep stairs to her death. Dark, right?
Darkness side by side with light, the story of my family. I prefer to think of that story as the ghostly child imparting a warning to the living girl, my mother, who always afterwards took those steps gingerly.
To be honest, I was a clumsy child. Clumsy still, but thanks to childhood ballet lessons and grad school Jung Sim Do classes, I now fall gracefully.
I wish I had video of my most impressive fall to date. Not the time I was carrying a cushion downstairs, fell in an upright position and spent the better part of a year sitting on donuts. No, my most fantastic fall would have won me $5,000 on Funniest Home Videos, if only captured in video.
In those days I was a relatively spry 27-year-old, delivering pizzas after receiving my master's degree in English. Having just delivered a pizza to Delta Upsilon (DU), who always had sticky floors but tipped well, I headed outside over the front marble steps, not realizing the winter storm had filmed them with an icy sheen. Both feet flew out in front of me, and for an instant, I was completely airborn. Instinctively, my arms flew out in perfect back fall position, smacking the steps with the pizza bags. My only injury from that fall? A bit of a stiff neck, the kind you get if you don't do back fall exactly perfect. Thank goodness I'd fallen while my pizza bag was empty, or else I probably would have seriously injured myself trying to protect the stupid pizzas.
At times, I've pondered the meaning of my stairy destiny. Why did I become the chosen one? Was it my wide feet and habit of walking on my heels? Or did the stairs see the red "V" birthmark on my forehead and mistake it for a sign, an arrow pointing downwards? All I know is that I'm the only one in my family with such tails of handrails. Except for one.
Although she's an inch shorter and seven years younger, many people say my sister resembles me. I think that's how she lost her two front teeth, a couple years early, falling down the front porch steps and landing face first. The stairs mistook her for me.
After so many falls, I've memorized the pattern. A misplaced moment, an instant of stomach-lurching fear, and then the crash. Whether grasping a railing or stretching out my limbs to spread out the impact, that's the part I'm getting really good at. Because if I've learned one thing over all these years, it's that it's not the fall you need to worry about. It's how you land.
When I was a baby, my grandmother dropped me down a flight of stairs. I survived, remarkably unscathed. Ever since then, the stairs have been trying to finish the job.
In the most recent attempt, stairs tripped me on my way to my Cardio Kickboxing class. I pitched forward, falling upwards, catching myself with my forearms. From that instance, I acquired a blue-black line across my left shin, from the edge of the stair, as well as a resurgence of tenderness in my right wrist, already sore from defeating a similar attempt on concrete steps at my apartment complex, this past spring.
My husband tells me to be careful, if not for him than for the sake of our 8-year-old son, KFP. I nod as if there's anything I can do, when I know better. That last time I fell? That was me being careful. I swear I was even looking at my feet when it happened. The stairs don't care.
Careful or not, I’ve tripped the stairs fantastic many times. Some falls have been more spectacular than others. I nearly lost a toenail, twisting in loose shoes and sliding down several steps while on -- wait for it -- the first day of a weeklong family vacation. Nowadays I remember that week as the last time my brother's, my sister's and my family spent time with my Mom, her partner and my Dad, just a year before Mom died. In those days, I thought of the vacation as the Week of the Blackened Toenail. But as Mom always said about vacation mishaps, “At least we’ll have stories to tell later.”
Stories. Like stairs. She told me one once, about a noise she heard bumping down the attic stairs in her childhood home, built by her grandfather in coal country. The sound bump, bump, bumped down the stairs then crashed into the door. When she opened that door, she saw -- nothing. Perhaps, she suggested in breathy tones, the noise belonged to the spirit of her cousin, who had fallen down the steep stairs to her death. Dark, right?
Darkness side by side with light, the story of my family. I prefer to think of that story as the ghostly child imparting a warning to the living girl, my mother, who always afterwards took those steps gingerly.
To be honest, I was a clumsy child. Clumsy still, but thanks to childhood ballet lessons and grad school Jung Sim Do classes, I now fall gracefully.
I wish I had video of my most impressive fall to date. Not the time I was carrying a cushion downstairs, fell in an upright position and spent the better part of a year sitting on donuts. No, my most fantastic fall would have won me $5,000 on Funniest Home Videos, if only captured in video.
In those days I was a relatively spry 27-year-old, delivering pizzas after receiving my master's degree in English. Having just delivered a pizza to Delta Upsilon (DU), who always had sticky floors but tipped well, I headed outside over the front marble steps, not realizing the winter storm had filmed them with an icy sheen. Both feet flew out in front of me, and for an instant, I was completely airborn. Instinctively, my arms flew out in perfect back fall position, smacking the steps with the pizza bags. My only injury from that fall? A bit of a stiff neck, the kind you get if you don't do back fall exactly perfect. Thank goodness I'd fallen while my pizza bag was empty, or else I probably would have seriously injured myself trying to protect the stupid pizzas.
At times, I've pondered the meaning of my stairy destiny. Why did I become the chosen one? Was it my wide feet and habit of walking on my heels? Or did the stairs see the red "V" birthmark on my forehead and mistake it for a sign, an arrow pointing downwards? All I know is that I'm the only one in my family with such tails of handrails. Except for one.
Although she's an inch shorter and seven years younger, many people say my sister resembles me. I think that's how she lost her two front teeth, a couple years early, falling down the front porch steps and landing face first. The stairs mistook her for me.
After so many falls, I've memorized the pattern. A misplaced moment, an instant of stomach-lurching fear, and then the crash. Whether grasping a railing or stretching out my limbs to spread out the impact, that's the part I'm getting really good at. Because if I've learned one thing over all these years, it's that it's not the fall you need to worry about. It's how you land.
