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...