I still avoid going past the corner where I fell a few weeks ago. At first I avoided the entire block, afraid to come across the shattered glasses I left lying there, or the blood from my split chin spattered on the pavement. Lately I’ve been able to pass by on the opposite side of the street, but still haven’t set foot on the very sidewalk where I fell. I’m not sure when I will be able to.
But the other day, I came close enough to the scene of the accident to make an upsetting discovery. Because I fell right underneath one of our town’s many beautiful street trees, I’d assumed that I must have tripped over a sloping slab of sidewalk, a commonplace hazard, of which I’ve long been conscious.
But guess what? The sidewalk where I fell, at that corner, beneath that tree, is almost completely level. No roots have muscled the pavement up from its bed where it might be caught by an errant careless toe on dark evening. What did I trip over? What caused me to lose my balance? How could I have been moving confidently forward one moment, and crashing to earth the next?
The unanswerable questions inspired by this discovery haunt me. They undermine my confidence and fill my imagination with terrifying visions — future falls, inexplicable accidents, unpredictable environments where flat sidewalks trip me up, where I’ll ever feel confident or safe again.
Most of us probably remember an elderly relative who feared falling. Certainly I do: ‘falling and breaking a bone,’ as she always put it (in air quote tones) was among my mother’s chief worries. How puzzling this was to me as a child! What’s so scary about falling?Like all children, I did it every day, nearly always scrambling up unhurt, in blithe and blissful ignorance of the great terrors the world held for my elders.
Now I am an elder myself, a massive adjustment. Will I ever walk past that corner again without shuddering? Will I ever feel completely at home in the world again?
Linnetontheleaf 
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