A memorable day...

I still love fried clams. They are more a delicacy now than they were, and are more expensive than they used to be. I regret throwing them up.



It was a wonderful Sunday afternoon, bright and warm. I was playing with my friends on the "Back Rocks" of Nahant, an island off the coast of Massachussets. My friends and I were looking over the cliff, or so they tell me. Was I off balance? Was there something at the bottom that fascinated my eight year old curiosity? Maybe a dead horseshoe crab, or a fish, caught in a tidal pool? The truth is, I am cheated of the memory of the set up; I just remember the one surprising vignette.



There were granite rocks, boulders weathered round and regular, in front of my face. I was flying. I was falling and as I opened my eyes I remember seeing the grey and white riprap that made up the old sea wall over the "back rocks" of Nahant. Just a fleeting snapshot, as if a shutter in my mind had momentarily opened, taking one photograph for my memory. I don't remember what made me fall, nor do I remember hitting the rocks at the bottom. I just remember one cruel flash when I knew that I couldn't control the outcome of whatever happened next. I was in a terrifying freefall and then nothing. Just a snapshot.



I have spent no small time contemplating that snippet of time. I certainly would have liked to know why I fell. I mean, if I knew, maybe I would be able to consider the ramifications of being a stupid kid, playing too close to the edge. Maybe I could consider the bad luck of having the rocks give way under me, or something like that. But all I have is one truly out of control moment of terror.



Life began again at the bottom of the cliff. As I awakened I remember raising myself up on my forearms, not knowing that any time had elapsed, and I looked into a pool of blood on the boulder where my head must have hit. There was a broken tooth lying there and I spit out the broken parts of other teeth and I screamed. It was a scared little boy scream that reverberated off of the rocks and the cliff; a scream that came right from my heart. I remember feeling confusion, fear and even anger that this had happened to me. It couldn't have happened to me, yet it did, and I remember thinking that there was no help for me now except that which I could conjure for myself.



I picked up my tooth and I got to my feet, shaky and bleeding from my mouth and ears. Although I have only a few memories of what happened next, I remember climbing the seawall a little ways from where I fell, where it wasn't so steep or high. My friends were gone (Later I learned that they had run to their home in terror and told their mother that I was dead). I began to walk. For some reason I felt it necessary to catch my blood in my cupped hands, and so I walked on with my tooth floating in a double handful of blood. A cream colored convertible passed, slowing. It's top was down; the four occupants stared at the gory little boy, but the car never stopped.



At that moment an elderly woman who had heard my scream was looking out of her front window. She spotted me slowly shuffling down the road and she came through her front door at a run, moving quickly through her courtyard to where I stood. Gently taking me by the shoulders, she guided me into her house. She lived in a large mansion, with beautiful wood floors and expensive furnishings. I relaxed and dropped my precious blood all over her hardwood floor. I was surprised that she didn't seem to care. She put me on her bed, and then somehow my parents were there.



Of course, they took me to the hospital emergency room, where to my eternal disgust, I threw up the clams.



That was a really ugly day. I have a few porcelain teeth, a scar under my bottom lip where a tooth went through and an almost imperceptable dent in the supraorbital ridge over my left eye as momentos of that day. It was a life changing event for a little boy. No one likes to see their own blood, especially an innocent child. But at the tender age of eight, I learned that "stuff" happens. That was my blood on the rocks. It isn't always the other guy. I learned that it can happen to you. You are not bulletproof. You can fail. You can fall. You can die. If your choices are stupid, or the stars are so aligned, you can fall down your cliff and the recovery, if there is one, is up to you. It may be carefully scripted, or it may be totally random, but it's your life, so you climb back up your own cliffs. You are responsible for your own survival, happiness, and teeth. There will be kindly old ladies, but there will be cream colored convertibles too; don't let them discourage you. Your life is still your choice.



I am an old man now, and every day I remind myself that I am alive. I am alive so I am still able to change, to recover, to climb back up any cliff that I fall off. When I am dead I will rot away and be still, but not now. I have a lot to learn and a lot of changing to do. Some of my grown kids have told me that I am not the same as they remember. They are right.



I have not yet lived my best day.