It was the perfect day for exploring, and I am a consummate nerd. My family was delighted to finally get our dusty feet on the trail up to the curious ash-rock cliff dwellings that make up some of the most interesting parts of Bandalier National Monument. After wending our way up a narrow picturesque staircase that led up to the caves that were hollowed out and expanded by the ancestral native peoples of long ago, we were excited to see pueblo-style ladders--an invitation to explore. The kids lost no time in climbing up into the little caves, and our littlest, Asa, was right behind them, his short, chubby two-year-old legs barely spanning the rungs, which were suspended at a 45-degree angle to the ground. It would have been a nasty fall for him, so I rushed to his aid, only to discover that he was perfectly confident and didn't need anyone's help to get up that ladder. It was a moment (ya know?), discovering that the baby of our family is suddenly able to keep up with the big dogs, and so I drew back, cell phone camera in hand, to take a picture.
It was just that one step.
The one step backwards, over ground I'd just covered and assumed I knew; the one confident step onto what was supposed to be solid ground--and it was, just not the type of solid ground I was expecting. Where flat ground was supposed to be rose a little solidified volcanic ash-heap, the funny little leftover of a long-ago explosion that no doubt rained down fire and brimstone on a very different-looking landscape. It met my foot with what I am not entirely sure was not a bit of enthusiasm, and I must have looked like Yosemite Sam slipping on a banana peel at that moment. I flew--or tried--and missed the sky by quite a bit. Instead, my head came down first, onto another pernicious little outcropping of ash-rock, with a kind of sickening BOINK. Christopher said he heard a weird mushy sound (thanks, Honey...at least we know now I'm not as hard-headed as we'd once suspected!), and he turned to find me somehow sitting up but cradling my head and saying something stupid, like, "I've never done THAT before!" My first response, after violently addling my (evidently mushy) brain was to try and act like everything was fine. How typical.
So I tried to resume the adventure, even while incubating my very own goose egg right there on the side of my skull, the labor pains of which were a dull, somewhat sickening headache. I thought I'd be okay, but then the sun began beating down on me in ernest, and the wooziness began to grow. I sort of stumbled back to the shade of the parking lot and sat drinking iced Coke and reciting the alphabet and even numbers and the pledge of allegiance in Spanish and now-is-the-time-for-all-good-men-to-come-to-the-aid-of-their-country and my kids' birthdays and my anniversary, in my head so I would know I wasn't losing cognitive ability.
As the day drew to a close, I began to notice a growing sense of uneasiness in myself. We looked up symptoms of concussion and were surprised to find out that sensory sensitivity is one of the long list of evidences of a concussion, and I was definitely experiencing that, and it was growing by the minute. I wanted the kids to shut up. I wanted to get out of the van. I wanted iced tea and tater tots NOW. I clawed my jewelry off of me because I couldn't stand the feel or the sound of it. I started crying uncontrollably and begging for a hotel room. I didn't want to go to a hospital. I was just freaking out, and my poor husband was at a loss of what to do with me. Finally my begging won out (my head was getting harder, I guess!) and we holed up for a night in Los Alamos while I relaxed and sucked down my Sonic iced tea like it was a life-saving IV. But beyond the relaxing and resting and chilling out, there was nothing that could or even needed to be done; this wound had to heal with time and with awareness.
Over the last few days, it's been getting better; I notice I start to get easily agitated, and I know that backing off and isolating myself or jamming earphones into my ears for a few minutes is enough to stave off the freakies. But that little disagreement with gravity back at Bandalier has done a couple of really useful things for me. I think it opened a door in my mind for a little while, where all of my pent-up crazy-angst of the past 2-3 weeks could finally escape. That slip on the rock, that sudden, unexpected flying into the ground, that sickening thud at the end, were all a metaphor for my emotional life lately--a metaphor I had no choice but to feel and to fully experience and to find a way through.
And what I have discovered is this: I was darned lucky that the fall wasn't worse than it was (I'm speaking in parallel here--this applies to my emotional banana slide just as much as my physical one); sitting on the ground and acting like I was fine was really assinine; I needed a strong arm (or arms, as is the case with all of my wonderful friends surrounding me with so much love and wisdom this week) to help put me back on my feet, guide me down the mountain, and force me to just stop for awhile.
I think the most important lesson here, though, is this, and it's what you've all been trying to tell me all week (I have let your words be like a soaker hose to my soul, slowly dripping in and saturating even the driest parts): this fall wasn't fatal, and it's slowly getting better. I'm still bruised and it's still a headache lurking around every stress. I'm going to be feeling the effects of this for a very long time, and honestly, my feet won't be falling so cavalier on the ground any more; I'll be a little bit jaded and a little bit careful and a little bit scared. But I know now, at least, that the adventure is still out there, in all of its danger and glory and stupidity and solemnity, and the hard landing really has toughened me up just a little, even as I've felt smaller and more fragile than at any other time of my life.
--Teri.
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