Fear of Falling

My youngest grandson, Dimitri, is 16 months old. His daily routine involves climbing anything and everything, and falling down at least as often as he succeeds. I realize baby tumbles are most often not as serious as they look (witness Mitri bouncing happily back up within nanoseconds of a flop). But it’s still pretty impressive, that physical agility and resilience.  

I don’t remember being 16 months old myself, of course. But I do clearly recall every significant fall of my youth--down Grandma Berrigan’s basement stairs, out of the apple tree in our Ardsley, NY backyard, getting knocked down by New Jersey shore ocean waves multiple times. In 9^th grade, trying to walk downhill to high school one morning and hitting a patch of black ice—painful wipeout leading to a chiropractor.

As I aged, my athletic prowess never progressed much. For example, I didn’t learn to catch a thrown ball until I was in a play in my early 20s, and had to do it as part of the show. In the “staying upright” department, I didn’t fare much better. Exhibit A: my famous “Wizard of Oz” onstage incident when Dorothy (moi) fell on the Yellow Brick Road and broke her wrist.

Expectant mothers in their last trimesters tend to have the grace of elephants (which is patently unfair to elephants). Our center of gravity has majorly shifted, and also we cannot see our feet. I took some slips over my five pregnancies, but was always careful to shield my child-filled tummy from contact with the floor. When I was expecting Julie (#5), I was cleaning the shower stall and lost my balance. Stomach safe, but tailbone cracked. 

All of which leads me to my current situation. I am 69 years old, and I have become TERRIFIED of falling. Back in the day, my mom fell and broke her hip—and died exactly one year later. Need I say more? Seriously, though, my phobia is really out of control. My hiking days (not that there were many of those) are definitely over. I take the stairs in the house as slowly and gingerly as a 100 year old. I envision my collection of bones as super-brittle, ready to shatter at the mere mention of slippage.  I live with six other family members, or I’d be on the phone today, purchasing a Life Alert device. Somehow my hubby, at 76, is still as spry as a mountain goat.

What to do? Well, I stopped wearing high heels 15 years ago, so that’s a tiny help. Otherwise? I don’t yet use a walker, and installing one of those stairlift thingies may be a tad premature. Unfortunately, the way I solved my night-driving issues (I just stopped driving after dark entirely) is not practical in this instance.

I guess I could decide that I’m better off never walking again, and conduct the remainder of my life from the safety of my comfy chair. But that’d be a bit ridiculous.

Wouldn’t it be?