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.
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