April 25,2021

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Thanks to all of you who do.

Back atcha.

s

AFTER THE FALL #2

 It was a doozy, one sweetheart of a fall. I've been sitting here for an hour trying to find the best description for my "fall". I'm still not satisfied with this one, but there she be. My sweetheart. I've walked that same walk across my front porch hundreds of times, maybe thousands. So, as we say on Passover, why is this night different from all other nights? Yet, unlike Passover, I have no idea. One minute up, the next second down. Irony is that I didn't feel much for another day and a half. Big deal. I'd been through worse. Try Parris Island. Maybe so, but a day and a half later I was sitting with my grandson when a grenade went off in my lower left rib cage. I'd felt this kind of pain only once years before in a nightmare I had protecting my son. Three skinny giants in full length black western style coats were hovering over him. Actually, they seemed like men on stilts. No way were they going to hurt my kid so I took off running, leapt upon their backs, and smashed their heads together...except I leapt out of bed and hit the floor breaking a rib to go along with the torn back muscle from the gym the day before, the one the chiropractor said looked like a salami. Immediately, I thought who in the hell is making all that noise? Some strung out junkie screaming in the street? A mad dog? A tire squealing cop chase? A coyote in a bear trap? It was me! Howling like a gut shot dog. Three days on a morphine drip finally shut me up. This last fall wasn't quite that bad, but it had its moments. I fell back against a screen panel from the front porch and shattered it. With nothing to break my fall, I slid down the tattered screen like a luge run and butt slammed into our concrete porch. 

It wasn't exactly, "Houston, we've got a situation''. More like,"What the f...?" I'd taken worse falls playing king of the hill when I was a kid, or so I thought until that grenade ripped red hot shards of high voltage pain shredding my hip and propelling me to unexpected places. A dose of vulnerability was one of them.

I never felt old before but now I'm beginning to wonder.

As I waited on a rocking chair in our bedroom for Madden to drive me to an emergency ward, such as there are in these parts where you worry they might have to send out for a band-aid. Anyway, I sat there still as the sphinx watching my wife cuddling with our grandson  -  "Good Night,Moon" - two such faces, beautiful and at peace - and I wondered how I'd feel if this were the last sight I would ever see on this earth, or any other earth since my beliefs stop here? And, for an instant, they were. Beauty as Beauty as Beauty. No Vermeer. No Botticelli. Real as Real as Real. An instant. And then there were my brother and sister, uncles and aunts (our moderating influences), cousins catching tadpoles and going to Emerson Farms for ice cream, the dearest of of old friends whom I will never see again, the dearest of the ones I'm still with, the dearest of new ones  on which the bets are still out. And then, Shazam, like the greatest social special effect of all time,  a zoom screen suddenly appeared behind me with everyone's picture in year book style. 

I guess I really don't want to leave anyone.

My buddy from way back at Yale, Dyanne Simon, brought in the  theological angle. Might not that Fall be my eviction from Eden, from that Paradise called childhood where people would hug us when we got hurt or feed us a lettuce and tomato sandwich for a snack or a root beer float on a hot day? 

Was this the moment I was finally barred from the children's playground? My Fall from Paradise? Oh, come on, not even the see-saw? Doesn't invulnerability mean anything any more?

Bob Lemond, Jamie's manager, when he was dying, told me it's not who loves you that really matters, it's who you love. It went to the heart of me - such a beautiful and profound thing to say. Over the years, I heard his words from to time to time, but I never really listened to them as much as I do now.

    

Ooooops! Another one.

I don't know what key or keys I pressed, but, apparently, whatever I did, a whole batch of past blogs got sent out. Ignore them. I'm trying to get a new one out this Sunday, 4/11.

Sorry.

And thank all of you who sent me "get over the fall" messages. Lots and lots of you. Thank you all.

See ya,

Stephen

AFTER THE FALL - #1

 Sorry, folks, I took a fall. Nothing broken but a good discombobulation. Stupid,stupid,stupid. I should have known better, but stupid is as stupid does.

Back atcha next week. Have a good one.

stephen