The Longest Fall
I know what its like to be a leaf floating in the breeze. It feels like light years. Because Time runs slower when you’re younger. Even more so when one is falling from a tree.
Fifteen feet apparently. Four meters? I saw the rope: unbroken, and fruit box : tipped on one side. Next the branches of the red pepper tree. Until the gravel strewn ground rushed up at me. Full force on my left elbow. Flopping me backwards and grazing my chest.
The kids next door were building a tree house. They’d decided to add a cable car. Which was a wooden fruit box attached by rope to a wire. From tree to ground.
They needed a tester. A volunteer. Me. I climbed up, scaled the branches, stepped into the fruit box. And was tipped out. Fell out. Head first. Floating to the ground…My elbow hit the gravel first. I know I rolled over because I grazed my chest. Which I only noticed later.
Because right then, I felt that someone had shoved a thick metal rod all the way up my arm.
I got up. Crossed the street to my home. I found the outside tap, turned it on and washed the dirt off.
And so comforted (I wasn’t), I opened the side door, turned right, walked to the end of the hall, opened and closed my bedroom door, pulled back my bedclothes and buried myself in and under. At no time did I think to ask anyone for help. I had learned that much by then.
Same as I did when I was avoiding church. Hoping the pain would go away. Which it didn’t.
Time stopped. Nothing happened for maybe twenty minutes. Which was the same as me avoiding church…
My bedroom door opened. A head peeked in, making sure it was me. She neither spoke to me nor caught my eye nor approached me. Then my mother closed the door She was to say later it was because she heard me screaming. I was silent. Besides between her and me, was a bedroom door, a hallway and two connecting doors. So no...
Nothing happened for maybe another twenty minutes. Time had stopped again.
The door opened again. Two guys in blue overalls enter. Ambulance men. Followed by my twin brother and my mother still hanging back near the door. They asked me what had happened, checked my elbow, and they did the best thing ever. They put a plastic or was it rubber splint on my arm and inflated it, best pain relief ever…so I still remember sighing with relief.
I don’t recall going to hospital. I don’t even remember getting the plaster cast. But I do recall returning home.
And my mother was not glad to see me.
Apparently according to her I had fallen when the rope broke. Seeing as I said I wanted to be a scientist I should have checked beforehand. How wasn’t specified. I don’t know. I never became a scientist. I couldn’t answer her question then or now.
And that was the official story from then till now. I was too young, just seven, too scared to argue with my mother and set her straight. Otherwise I would get iced. Until she decided I was worth talking to again.
Nor was I old enough to question her actions that day: ask her why she didn’t comfort me or ask what happened.
And I didn’t really have to face what had happened until I became a parent. And saw my daughter fall off her horse.
She was riding and panicked. And I panicked. The horse panicked, shied and she fell in front of me.
And I don't remember thinking about what I should do. With my daughter lying crumpled at my feet.
I simply leant down. Picked her up. And carried her inside. And stayed with her until aid came.
And it was only now overthinking afterwards of what I did and overthinking why I did it, I still think I acted selfishly.
You know why?
I didn’t want anyone to wait that twenty minutes like me.