When I twisted my ankle in the
“Would you like to hear about my latest fall?” I asked, and then proceeded to explain. But their faces floated before me. I felt off balance again, unable to finish the sentences I’d lost control over. I was falling for real this time.
Actually, I’d been reeling for days since saying goodby to Christopher. More than ready to leave for college, he’d exhausted what home had to offer him. For now my work is over. The silent house keeps telling me this. And I want him to be where he is. In my intellect I know this, but my feelings are less convinced.
For the first few days after he left I felt upset. Seasick almost. Off kilter and blurry. As long as I stayed on course I made it through the day. But if I strayed and gave the feelings a chance to take over, I was in danger of falling.
I don’t know if my students were aware of this that morning. They listened respectfully. I think I was leaning toward my desk, and somehow finished the story without ever telling it.
The truth is I did fall and turn my ankle just enough for the walking tour of the Evergreen campus to be uncomfortable. Now that it’s over, I see it as making enormous sense. It was a ritual of sorts, for me to limp upon entering my son’s new world.
When I was nine I saw The Greatest Show on Earth, a movie about the stars of The Big Top from behind the scenes. Jimmy Stewart played a sad clown who never removed his make-up, and Charlton Heston’s strong jaw firmly clenched as he pulled on the ropes undoing the circus tent where Gloria Grahame had moved with ease among elephants.
But most of all, I remember Cornell Wilde, the handsome trapeze artist. Defying gravity, he flirted with falling as he somersaulted through the air without a net. Eventually he fell, and for the rest of the film hid his crippled arm and hand under a cape. His hand looked like a frozen claw. When I think of the movie, I think of his hand.
But the aerial maneuvers that took place. He flew very high many times before the final fall.
Icarus flew too high. I imagine his handmade wings--their feathers thick as a chieftain’s headdress secured to his shoulders with wax. He made them work, but flew too close to the sun. You cannot fly with unsteady wings, and he fell through the clouds, sky, rain, or whatever the weather was that day, downward to the sea.
His ascent was cut short by bad judgment. Most falls seem to come about without our being aware of what went wrong up there.
Last year, when such reminders made themselves known, they met with a “Yes mom,” like you’d say to someone still behaving in an outmoded way you find somewhat amusing, if slightly annoying.
I think my fall at Evergreen was a way of understanding he is on his own now. This is his life and welcome to it. That doesn’t mean I have to believe it entirely all at once. A little at a time, the way I’ve seen birds outside my window bringing twigs home to their nest.
