I'm sitting for two weeks with a broken pelvis and broken ribs, not able to walk around for even more weeks, this is someone who never sat down, unless I was on a horse, or occasionally to eat.
I'm going a little stir crazy, and watching everyone else do everything, take care of the dogs, clean, feed the chickens, scoop horse poop, do the laundry, make lunches, make dinners, my 11 year old is dumping my pee bucket -- my face comes up to everyone's bellybuttons, this is not my perspective, this new perspective I'm gaining. I guess then, it is my perspective.
Anyway, in the last few days when my pain gets better enough that I can focus on real things, like writing, and peeking at things on ebay, I am looking for things like a new helmet. Maybe I should wear a safety vest. Maybe I should get a whole inflated sumo wrestler suit so if I ever fall again I can bounce. Looking at it all makes me scared. Then I by habit look up SKITO which is a brand of bareback pad that I can never find or afford, a really good way to ride your horse bareback. There hasn't been one on ebay in two years.
There's one right there.
My body is frowning at me darkly um didn't you just fall off your horse?
I mention it to my mom, who has gotten me one before. I do have a birthday coming up. But something is bothering me in my mind.
Maybe the bigger question. Should I stop riding?
My mom says no, dumbass. You do not stop riding. It is who you are.
This seems like really bad advice, I tell her. I could just WALK through nature. Except I never would. I'm so lazy. And on a horse my legs can swing.
I'm thinking of all the safety equipment I had also been looking at. If I keep adding stuff to my body, maybe I'll be stifling every time I ride, but if I fall, every place will be a mattress. My pelvis is suggesting this is a good idea. My pelvis and I have been talking a lot more than usual lately because we're both on the same couch together and we're not moving like we usually are. My pelvis (and ribs) apparently are all for safety. But I hadn't bought a new helmet even yet because when your bones ache, you just can't think you'll ever want to do anything fun again, especially on a gigantic horse. And bareback is the way I fell off.
My mom says, completely ignoring my pelvis, "I'm getting that bareback pad for you. Because you're still here. We're still talking. It can be your accident prize."
My mom doesn't care if I fell off bareback. She knows I fell off because I made another poor judgement going over a long waving palm frond on a horse that's afraid of long waving palm fronds. On cement. She says this accident prize is for Best High Vaulted Fall onto Cement.
So while she's ordering this and busily deciding she will say the Power of Mother blessing all over it and me and my ribs and pelvis as are the terms I request in order to actually USE the thing, I go outside in my temporary wheelchair in the sunshine. I can't put weight on one leg, but I can use the other leg. So I take the walker and I walk and hop all the way around the pool, past the chickens. Into the barn area. I rescue a chair and sit on it and watch little birds building a nest high on the roof in a pipe that will probably explode Tim's house since I think it's his cooking vent pipe. But they don't care. They are singing and carrying around worms, even now, right here, in the 2000's. These birds, my mom said, that they see on her walks with Dad in the mornings, we tell the birds to go visit you. They're happy, singing in the sun and caring for their babies, nestled in the pipe.
I get back on my foot and I hop all the way through the yard. The dogs trailing me for their own security purposes. I scoop a pile of horse poop, balanced like an ice skater. Because that's who I am. I go out through the basketball court driveway and end up back at the pool, sitting on the diving board and putting my toes in the water. I did the whole loop. Something that I would do maybe fifty times a day, I just did it once wobbily and it was the longest, most treacherous, hottest, funnest day in two weeks.
I'm getting an accident prize.
My husband comes through to go pick up one of the kids, because now all the jobs are his job. Except he usually did all the driving anyway. We had had a conversation earlier about mostly everyone is trying to keep it all together, just the basics of life, together. Hardly anyone is looking for more - to see and feel life, real, true life, more, because feeling life is scary.
"You can't be afraid of life," he said, without really thinking about it.
These are the people who love me.
