On Unsolicited Blessings & Senior Mishaps

A few months ago, my youngest son Sam called me & told me that one of his friends was moving to Colorado & had chairs he did not want to transport.  Sam said,

You need sturdy chairs.  Yours are old & rickety & falling apart.

He also said he did not need the chairs & would give them to me.

It is true, our barley twist chairs are old – the really fine ones are antiques my mother bought thirty years ago, to match a barley twist table I bought at an antique store in the inner city.  The chairs, like our three barley twist tables, contain no nails.

Yesterday, when Sam & Snoopy came over for Thanksgiving (Snoopy is a Doberman Pincher & a delight), they brought chairs.

The chairs are from Ikea & contain nails.  They also need to be stained a color – any color, maybe each one a different color. 

They are extremely sturdy.

After every one of our guests yesterday left & all the dishes were washed, I went to my computer for the first time of a day that began at a 5:00 am in spite of my careful planning to prepare everything but the turkey, gravy, & spinach salad on Thanksgiving.

I sat in one of those antique barley twist chairs.

And ended up on my ass.

The chair completely came apart.  Because I was in a dress, I could not crawl to a place to bring myself up & had to call on my brother Jason to get me up.

Last night, I felt fine – a little tumble.

This morning, I woke up & struggled to move.  My body feels just a smidge better than it did when I tripped getting out of a chair & fractured my left clavicle & bruised the entire left side of my body.  This time, it was the right side of my body.

Including my ass.

Recently, my friends Cate Poe & Nita Gulbas & I were talking on Facebook about the dangers of falling as we grow older – Nita pointed out that it is not if a senior will fall, but when.   Cate took up yoga after her mother started yoga at age 70.  Nita is an avid horsewoman & also works out at a boxing gym.

Although I am convinced that they both know how to roll & minimize potential damage when they fall, I am not sure either of them would have emerged unscathed in the collapse of an antique barley twist chair.

Today, after Round II of Thanksgiving with my Aggie sister & brother in law, I am grateful for my family & friends, for surviving my latest Senior mishap, & for my son Sam’s unsolicited gift of sturdy chairs with nails.

One of which is now at my computer.