I tripped on the sidewalk the other day. It must have been an uneven slate. It was a strange feeling to be so off balance, stumbling to regain stability. My eyes locked on the speckled pavement as I went down and whipped my arms out in front of me.
It was reminiscent of when I was a little girl, I was more prepared to fall when I was younger. It was almost expected. I remember this one time in particular, when we were celebrating Easter at my aunt’s house. I was wearing a little blue dress made of ruffles with a white cardigan and white stockings that wrapped all the way around my feet. I hated the stockings that covered my feet because I much preferred to walk around with bare feet. The bright, soft grass grazing the bottoms of my feet, tickling in between my toes. The cool kitchen floor cooling off the stinging surface of my feet when I came in from running around on the sizzling blacktop. I was convinced my feet were invincible, capable of withstanding any pointy rock or splinter.
That day, in my tiny blue ruffled dress, I was running on my aunt’s front lawn, chasing
my older cousins. To this day I still blame the stockings for obstructing my feet’s senses of the ground causing me to trip midrun. I fell forward and slid on the bright spring grass. I got up without a scratch. I started straightening out my ruffles when I noticed the giant hole in my stockings directly on my right knee. My clean, porcelain white legs interrupted by my green grass stained knee poking through the hole that trailed off into a run in my stocking reaching down to my suffocating feet.
I found my mom and she scolded me for ruining my nice Easter outfit. She pulled my stockings up, moving the hole higher onto my thigh to prevent it from continuing to rip when I bent my leg. My tipsy aunt mocked me for not being able to keep my balance. Her voice, being the most obnoxious and loud, reminded the room of a time I was chasing my dog around the house and slipped down the stairs. I started rolling like a ball and didn’t stop until I crashed into a wall. She was doubled over, almost crying laughing. My whole family was laughing, she always knew how to work up a party.
I was the youngest in my family. Out of all the cousins and even the second and third cousins twice removed. I was often joked about being so cute, and little, and naive. I understand it was nothing personal, but I was always the one to have a rip in her stockings. I didn’t like feeling so small and clumsy. That was the last time I remember tripping and falling. I learned to steady myself, I didn’t run around as much and decided to wear shoes more to always have a flat, even surface under my feet. I decided not to fall anymore. Until the other day.
Maybe I need to watch my step more. Maybe I drag my feet, I might need to work on picking my feet up higher. Maybe my shoelaces were untied, I need to be sure I double knot them. I remember looking around at the world from the bottom of the ground, it was quiet. It wasn’t too different from standing upright, but it was calmer, relaxing just laying there. Despite the previous shock of falling, I didn’t seem to care that I was on the ground. But then I heard a car coming up the road so I jumped back to my feet. I kept walking, pretended like nothing happened and hoped to forget, but the moment keeps replaying in my mind. It haunts every in between moment of my day, slowly slithering into memory and engulfing my consciousness until the scene is projected in my very retinas.
I’ve noticed that the palms of my hands are sore, and I have a scratch on my right knee. I don’t remember it hurting or bleeding afterwards, but I guess I scraped it on the sidewalk. I thought it an ugly, regular reminder of my imperfection and loss of balance. To put a bandaid on would only be more embarrassing, reflecting the juvenile immaturity of clumsily injuring myself. Easy to say I’ve been quite thrown off since my fall, something has felt off. As if the rotation of the world has been ever so slightly disrupted, and I’m unsure how to react.
I was walking in the park today, the same park I alway walk through on the way back from work. It was a pleasant day when within the breeze I heard a whisper, the whisper flew past my ear and when I turned my head to follow its call, I found myself staring at the little hill standing over the pond. It wasn’t a big hill, but large enough for kids to slide down in the winter. Staring at it, the grass looked so soft and fluffy, I could almost feel the reminiscent tickle on the bottoms of my toes. Before I realized it, I had put my purse down and I was sitting in the bright green grass, my recently pressed pencil skirt finding a place next to the dandelions. The fresh smell of the park was mixed around in the wind, I felt it pushing at my back. Suddenly I was rolling through the freshly cut grass. I saw a quick, continuous blur of blue and green, and then to blue again. My heart was racing, my head was spinning, my body was falling down the hill until I came to a gradual stop on the flat surface. I was acting like a child, so immature, so unbalanced and unkempt.
I was so free.
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