And what were you doing four years ago?

You can’t tell me what you were doing four years ago? Neither could my husband or my daughter. Apparently some things are more important to some of us than to others. To me it marks a very big day for me. It was four years ago that I fell and broke my arm at the wrist area.

We had both gone with our daughter and son-in-law to Knoxville, TN where he would begin class at his beloved University of Tennessee to complete his Masters degree. This would be a chance for us to help our daughter get a few things in order and then be able to spend a few days with her the next week before she started a full-time job in Tennessee.

My daughter and I rode in her car with a cat named Jezebel, while Jezebel’s adopted sister rode with my son-in-law in his truck. My husband followed along behind. We were lucky enough to get the psychotic cat that decided to spend the entire trip up howling and screaming from her cage in the back seat. But all things considered the trip was pleasant.

We arrived at the apartment, finished unloading the vehicles, got the psychotic cat from the cage and let her find a hiding place that she would continue to hide in for approximately the next year and a half or longer that they were there.

Finally, we were finished enough to go eat and it was getting a bit dark outside. Many times my daughter had made the comment, “Watch those steps, watch those steps.” And we had. Many times. Most of the trips were made by her Daddy and hubby as they unloaded. We mostly took the things from the top of the stairs and moved them in.

It was between 8:15 and 8:30 as we were leaving the apartment and somehow I managed to fall up the bottom step. It was a different height from the others and easy to misjudge even though I had been warned, and I just gracefully fell. Just completely fell up the step. I tried hard to keep anybody from knowing I had fallen. That’s always my first reaction. I don’t like to be embarrassed by showing just how dumb I can be by ending up on the ground. I scrambled as fast as I could to get up. My daughter was right there with me when I did it and she was afraid I had been hurt. I could tell my arm wasn’t exactly right, but I kept ignoring it because we were trying to eat and get back to the apartment so my son-in-law could get back and to bed early. He either had class the next day or was starting his new job and needed to be out early.

My daughter kept asking if I was alright and suggested maybe we should go by the emergency room and have it checked out. I kept assuring her all was well, until finally I realized it probably wasn’t really alright after all and maybe I had better have it checked out rather than pulling my son-in-law out of bed in the middle of the night for a trip to the emergency room. I figured he would get over it faster having to delay his dinner than having to lose sleep later, so I said, “Maybe we should just stop by and get it checked out.”

My daughter said she told her husband something was really wrong for me to agree to go to the hospital. And she was right. This wasn’t the time to be a martyr. I may have been stupid, but I wasn’t completely crazy enough to know there was some pain that would be probably much worse later on. I have a good tolerance of pain and sometimes it tends to get me in trouble because I do put things off when I shouldn’t, but this was one time I made the right decision.
After waiting in the emergency room and being x-rayed in several places, they took me back to my daughter and her daddy. She asked me if they had said whether or not it was broken. They hadn’t, so I asked if they had told them. She said, “Yes, the doctor said it was broken.” I think it made me mad more than anything. Mad that I now wasn’t going to be able to help her get her things organized like we had planned. Mad that we would have to go back home earlier than we had planned because I would have to have a cast put on it back home. They put on a temporary cast there, but that would have to come off very soon.

Long story short, the doctor fixed it up, sent me home with a prescription for pain (which I did get filled even though I was pretty sure I wouldn’t need it, but again, I knew my son-in-law wouldn’t forgive being awakened at night because I had been so stubborn,) and went back to their apartment. That night I even took a dose of the medicine, just in case I would need it in the middle of the night. I didn’t regret taking it.

I spent the next day or so supervising (?) while my daughter put her things away where she wanted them. It wasn’t as much fun as it was supposed to have been and we didn’t get to spend that time later in the week with her we had planned, but in spite of everything we did enjoy our time there.

Always every trip afterwards we still heard the same, “Watch that step, watch that step”. And we really were more aware of those steps.

We missed the kids while they were off in Tennessee doing their thing, but we had a lot of fun visits with them during their time there. I was introduced to A. C. Moore and another of the little scrapbooking stores in the area as well as several visits to Pigeon Forge/Sevierville to check out one of the large scrapbooking stores there. It’s probably a good thing for my pocketbook they finally moved back home.

And how do I know what I was doing four years ago tonight? Because it happened on the eve of my husband’s birthday and two weeks shy of my 60th birthday. So, now you know how I can remember!