go boom

Get up, child.
Pull your bones upright.

-- Audette Fulbright Fulson, "Prayer for the Morning"*

Not in the morning. In the late afternoon. Walking in the neighborhood. On an errand.

Carol taught me. When the baby falls down and looks at you, you must show that you saw it happen. Oops, you say. The baby is picking herself up, looking at the elbow, the knee, touching the place, trying to characterize the catastrophe. Fall down go boom, you say. Want me to kiss it?

Maybe it's enough that you witnessed and proclaimed the hurt: oops, and then the child forgets and moves on, but maybe she needs the more specific intervention, comes to you, and you kiss the spot. OK? the baby runs back to her play, sooner or later to fall again. She learns the routine. One days she falls, says oops; looks at you and says (you repeat after her), fall down go boom. She laughs, and runs on.

Sometimes, of course, there are material injuries. More is required than words: a cleaning of the wound and a band-aid. Or -- god forbid -- the rare but constantly feared trip to the emergency room. And yet most of the time it's  a matter of management: own the hurt, assess the damage, repair if necessary, move on.

But there's a limit to this blessing. Some day I'll be a danger to myself when I go walking, though I don't think this was that day. But I'll have a good long chance to think about it, as people react to my trivial wound, impossible to conceal. A certified wounded healer I am now.

I went boom yesterday. Just walking in the late afternoon. Crossing a quiet street. Coming up to the curb, where it dips to nothing for passage of wheelchairs and shopping carts. Coming up to the curb, where it dips to nothing, right where there was no curb. A collision path with concrete. Coming at me, too quick to stop. Almost at the same time, hands, forehead, chin, glasses on the sidewalk. Oops. Ow.

Damage reports. I'm still conscious. Glasses OK. Good. I put them back on my nose, I stand up. I put my hand to my forehead, then look at my fingers. A little blood.

A man comes up to me. You OK? Fall down go boom. I think so, am I bleeding (meaning am I bleeding a lot?) One spot on your chin, he says. I feel for the spot. Again a drop of blood. You want me to call an ambulance for you? No, I think. No, I say. I'll just go home (can't just pick up the cleaning now, can I?) Where do you live? Just the next street (not able to explain this as simply as I wanted to). Thank you, I say.

I'm steady on my feet (but now I wonder if I'm steady as I think). I'm wondering if my shirt will be all covered with blood by the time I get home, but the blood doesn't come in torrents. I'm just going to bruise and have ugly scrapes. I clean the wound with alcohol -- ow -- and look at the meaty mess of my face in the mirror. You should have seen the other guy, I'll say.

I've had a fall incident. I fell and hurt myself for no good reason. I'm getting old. Am I a fall risk? If you're labelled a fall risk, you can't go anywhere by yourself: that's the rule with our clients.

I take my history. Every few years I have a fall, sometimes spectacular. I once tripped and rolled over the landscaping border of a building before limping in to see a client who lived there. In San Francisco a dozen years ago I took a movie-worthy somersault from the curb across a street and stood up on the median with only a tiny scrape on the back of my hand. In a play reading in Chicago I sat in a chair too close to the platform edge, fell three feet and backrolled to my knees, picked up and continued. I take little injury from these incidents, and I attribute that invulnerability to my theatre training -- I have the practiced, subconscious skill of rolling and distributing weight.

But this time was different. The concrete was too fast for me. Ow. No rolling, just whip of my body, head at the end. Smack. I'm not as smart as I think I am, but that's hardly news. Just a reminder.

In the last year I've had a remission of arthritis, and rediscovered the workings of the knee joint. I've had good control of my sickness. I've felt like a youngster of fifty-five.

In my life, my city, my work, I can count on a lot concern and compassion (maybe more than I want). But lots of us are injured and can't count on compassion.

There's an injury many of us have received, a moral and spiritual injury -- an injury that we must heal and yet strategically conceal. We know we must own the hurt. We have fallen and gone boom. Some time is due. We can't move on without knowing what we move on from. We show our hurt to each other. Want me to bless it? Show it to the Spirit, to God the great and compassionate observer. If cleaning, stitching, bandages, emergency surgery are due, do what is needed. This is our homework. Do it at home.

But when we go into the world, let's not front our wounds. The forces let loose are not threatened by wounds, have only hatred for bandages and expressions of pain. "Empathy" is an obscene word for them. They throw parties because we are hurting. Micah tells us the Lord demands only that we make justice and do kindness, and walk humbly with the Spirit of Peace.

So go back into the playground, and threaten them with your justice. Speak the truth. Tell the stories. Claim your rights, and the rights of the bullied. Call out the bullies. Undermine their ideology of the fist. Hear the pain of those who chose this dream -- fall down go boom -- and ask them how they chose it, for they are victims. I call myself out here, for I don't know whether I am brave enough. I guess I'll be finding out.

*available at uua.org

I encourage readers to leave comments by clicking on the word "comment(s)" below.