When Fate Arrives

The tulip poplar leaves are always the first to fall and today, though it's only August 20th, their bright yellow four pointed leaves litter the black asphalt of Wendover Circle.  After a week of rain, there are a good number of green hickory nuts scattered on the street too.  

 

As I walk, I'm careful to watch my step.  It was, after all, a nut, specifically an acorn, that rolled under my inflexible hard soled clog last September and sent me reeling on the unforgiving concrete, splitting my knee cap in two.

 

Bones can be set and wired, and eventually, they knit and glue themselves back together, but they're never as good as new.  Sort of like a broken tea pot, I've been glued back together but I'll always have a crack.  

 

As I walk up and down the street, glancing serreptitiously at my pedometer...how many more steps to go?...my knee twinges and complains.  But today, unlike last September, I'm at least sensibly shod.  I have on shoes with flexible soles and, most importantly, I have a cell phone in my pocket.  If I fall down today,  I can call for help; I won't have to drag myself home like a worm again.

 

Hard headed as I am, I have learned this lesson:  No one is immune to the vicissitudes of fate and sometimes fate arrives in small, harmless looking packages.  Like acorns.  

 

Now I never step out of the house without my cell phone.  I also threw those hard soled Dansk clogs away.  Good riddance!  I'm pretty sure that had I been wearing flexible soles when I stepped on that acorn, my ankle would not have turned and I could have righted myself without falling down.

 

Oh well, eventually, it's always something.  Ultimately, life is not safe for any of us.  When the big one comes, I suspect it will probably come as a surprise.

 

 I wrote this song as my own birthday approached.  So many of the people I've loved are now dead:  my mother and father, aunts and uncles and several childhood friends. 

 

As always, I ask you to do me the favor of sharing Dogwood Daughter and Lily Cat Music for Kids with someone else.  I'm an indie artist, with no advertising.  But I do have kind people like you.  Thank you.

Be Well and Good Luck,

Martha Maria  

Leave a comment