In Which The Ground And I Have An Unexpected Encounter

I took a fall today.
Jesus. 
Glen was about to leave to take Magnolia fishing on the St. Marks River and as he was getting in his FourRunner he asked if I had a hat she could borrow because one does need a hat for fishing. 
Well, of course I did so I went back to the house to get it and was walking towards him when I tripped on a root and went down like a tree. I absolutely face-planted. I seriously ate dirt. My glasses flew off and my hearing aids did the same. 
How incredibly old can one possibly feel? 

How old ARE you? Old enough that when I fall, my hearing aids fall out.

Falling is the most seriously bizarre thing. One second you are functioning on earth with its gravity as one has all of one's life, remaining upright while walking as all humanoids have done since the dawn of humanoid history and the next you are in a completely different time/space continuum wherein gravity has taken over in a new and interesting and yet, horrifying way as you somehow have time to think, "Well hell. I am falling." 
And then, "How bad is this going to be?"
The last time I had a fall like this was years ago when I slipped on the back porch steps in the rain, fell, and realized quite quickly that I had damaged something pretty bad. In that case, I had broken what I think was four ribs and so yes, I had. 
In today's spill, I yelled out, "Oh, babe!" to Glen I suppose, but he wasn't very close and didn't hear me so I laid there and took inventory. I was breathing fine, nothing hurt terribly, and my face and chest were filthy with dirt. 
Okay. 
I got up and everything seemed to be working but as I gingerly touched my face, my hand came away bloody. And dirty. But I picked up my glasses which seemed miraculously to be unharmed and was not yet aware that I'd lost both hearing aids. I knew I'd lost one because I saw it and I picked that up too. I walked over to Glen who was unsurprisingly shocked. 
"I fell," I said. 
Duh.
"Are you alright?" 
"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine."
Why do we always say that? We could be laying on the ground with our arm separated from our body and we'd probably still say, "Oh, that's nothing. I'm fine. Just give me a minute here!"
But really, I was. I even convinced him to go on and pick up Maggie because that girl has been wanting to go fishing with her Boppy forever. I gave him the cap and he offered again to stay home, take me to the doctor, whatever, and I shooed him off, came in, went to the bathroom to assess the damage, took a washcloth to my face, stopped the bleeding of the little cut on my nose and put a bandaid on it, rubbed off the dirt, rinsed the sand out of my mouth, and was grateful as hell to see that my nose looked unbroken, my teeth were still exactly where they had been before. All-in-all, not so bad. The only thing that really hurt was my left wrist which must have taken some brunt of the fall or else I fell on it weird. I have no idea. It's the wrist I broke when I was seventeen and which has grown wonkier with every year of my life and it didn't hurt THAT bad. I could wiggle all my fingers, I had as much range of motion in the wrist as I had before which is to say, not a whole lot but I still had what I'd had. I didn't have any blurry vision or dizziness or bleeding from the mouth or nose and so this nurse's assessment was that I was (a) very lucky, and (b) in no need of a doctor. 

I think I'm going to be sore tomorrow. My nose is swollen, my face is red, as one would imagine after being sandpapered, and the wrist is bothersome. I've taken it fairly easy today as I know that the fall was an insult to the body as they say, and I am no spring chicken. I will be glad to get in bed tonight though, I can tell you that.

I got no food prep done except to boil a bunch of eggs to make deviled eggs for Thursday. I somehow ended up with many, many eggs, having bought some and then given some by Jessie from her hens, and Glen brought some home from Lake Seminole where a neighbor is taking care of a flock whose owners moved and who could not take their birds with them. I took the trash, I tidied up the wrapping paper detritus but I did not carry the bin that holds it all back upstairs, I loaded up all the boxes that were clogging up my pantry in the garden cart and hauled them to the burn pile but none of those things, not one of them, was very strenuous at all. 

I think that Magnolia and her grandfather had a very good time on the river. They just got off the water about an hour ago and so it was a full day. Here are a few pictures Boppy sent to Lily and me.

Pre-fishing lunch at the Riverside Cafe under their beautiful palapa roof. 

The ladyfish that Maggie caught entirely by herself.

A baby redfish.

Maggie is most definitely a Moon. All of the Moon women I've known have loved fishing as much as the men. I am so pleased that Glen took our grandgirl today. I know she will remember that for a very long time. 

An interesting thing that happened this morning before I lost touch with gravity was that I was inspired to google my great-uncle Burkett's house on Lookout Mountain. I have spoken about Burkett before. He was a very well-known man in Chattanooga, Tennessee for various reasons and there is a park named for him downtown there which he funded. He was also the founder of The Miller Center Foundation at the University of Virginia. 
I remember Uncle Burkett and his wife, Bill (yes) very well from my childhood. He was a character and not really a child friendly character but even at a young age, I knew the man had gravitas, even though I had no idea what that word meant. I was slightly terrified of him but somehow knew that I was so far beneath his radar that he gave as much notice to me as he would a house cat. Or less. He and Aunt Bill had no children of their own and I think my brother and I were simply aliens to him. 

I had vague memories of the house he and Aunt Bill lived in on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, and I wondered if there was anyway to find it on the all-knowing google. 
Turns out that it was just resold a few years ago and the listing is still to be found. The house was indeed as impressive as I remember although I do not like the way the interior has been redone and modernized. There was one picture that finally answered a question I have had in my mind for my entire adult life. I had the vaguest memory of a stone bench outside on the grounds of the house which I believe my brother and I and perhaps my mother, sat on to wait while some sort of business was taking place in the house. The scandal of my parent's divorce and the legal logistics before and after, were mysterious thing to me but I felt they held great importance and I think some of these issues were what was being discussed that day. But I have never been sure and not even sure that my memory of that stone bench was real. 
And then I saw this.

That's it. There it is. I think my brother and I walked on it as we waited to be allowed back inside. 
Why in the world do I remember that and also- how? Was I even five years old yet? But I swear to you, I have thought about that memory a hundred times. I thought about it and wondered about it just last week. 

I may end up studying our genealogy yet. 

Glen's home. He said it was a very fine day and that Maggie fell asleep on the way home. 
"Fishing wears me out," she told him. 
She'll probably sleep well tonight.

As will I.

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. I found the other hearing aid too. I told you I'm lucky.