I am lying face down in water and blue dish detergent. A light rain intermittently cools my bare legs and back. I am clutching my left foot and sobbing warm tears into a plastic sheet. A male voice from the beyond, at very slow speed, is yelling, ‘Turn off the water, turn off the water!” After minutes of neglect ( hours?) and when I actually think I may drown in 2 inches of water, my family sitting at our picnic table, navy blue Market umbrella recently installed, have surrounded me. They are urging me “gently” to turn over. I hear the metallic ‘SWOOSH’ of a cell phone camera and know they have, first documented the event. As I look up I am licked in the eye by a warm tongue, see the bemused faces of my daughters, the anguished look of my husband, the anxious look of his 7 year old son and the concerned eyes of Graham, our long hair chocolate and tan dappled dachshund. “When will I ever grow up!” I moan as I am hobbled to the Market umbrella where I sit the rest of the evening with a bag of frozen peas on my foot. The next morning, walking on the heel of a purple eggplant, I am driven by my daughters to an Urgent Care Unit. Forced into a wheel chair by a knowing nurse I am humbled into obedience and dependence. The girls exchange amused and devilish glances. I have broken my foot, cracked the metatarsals and done extensive damage to the muscles and ligaments. It was inevitable. My dance partner in College Ballroom Dancing and I were called the ‘Epileptic Swan Dance Company’. I had been drinking Lime Daiquiris with my daughters, now 26 and 22 AND I had been cheering the neighborhood kids on our homemade Slip n’ Slide. The one I had made, with dish soap from my own kitchen. Sitting there, crying under the fluorescent lights of the examination room I recalled raising my glass and yelling, “More soap, we need more soap!” Kevin, the nurse, fits me for crutches and hands me a prescription for 800 mg Hydrocodone. He escorts me to the door in the wheelchair and I ask him, “What are the inflatable Slip n’ Slides like?”

To be continued...