FALLING DOWN

Of the four elemental forces of nature; gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, gravity is supposedly  the weakest. Go figure. Try and tell that to a two-year who’s trying to learn to walk. Young children spend an inordinate amount of their time coming to an accommodation with this invisible force that keeps making them “fall down and go boom.”

But accommodate we do and soon gravity becomes nothing more than a nuisance factor in our physical lives. “I spilled coffee all over my shirt”. “He dropped the fly ball.” “I tripped over the cat”.

Granted, it still, on occasion, can dominate our physical world. Bungee jumpers and skydivers depend upon it. Bartenders would be lost without it and of course, it forever holds a position of supreme power in the annals of Armageddon, “Fuck with us and we’ll drop the Big One on you.”

What intrigues me is that as we get older and gravity plays a smaller and smaller part in our physical  lives, it tends to grow in power in the metaphysical. He fell from grace. She fell into the habit of smoking. He fell in with  a bad crowd. Nobody ever falls towards grace, plans on smoking  four packs a day or plots to join a street gang. It’s just something that happens, that we’re not aware of, or have no control over. Gravity is the universal cop out. It’s the invisible force that is forever plotting to bring us down. As it becomes more and more rare for us to actually  “Fall down and go boom,”  it becomes increasingly possible to “fall into a funk”,  “drop the ball” at the big meeting or just to be “down” when the rest of the world expects ”up.”

I guess all of this has been on my mind lately as I find the truce I made with gravity when I was four or five has been, in reality, a temporary one. As it turns out, gravity is a very patient opponent. It bides it’s time during the middle decades of our lives with the occasional spilled coffee on the shirt or misstep with the cat while gravity patiently awaits our senior years. It turns out that the sun isn’t the only thing that is going down in our sunset years. I seem to be hitting the ground with frightening regularity. Steps have suddenly become an adversary and cracks in the sidewalk? Forget my mother’s broken back, what about mine?  Because gone are the days where you can fall and get away with a Band-Aid on your boo boo. Now that fall from grace can be the broken hip, first act fall, in your final swan song.

So be it. I’ve literally had a good run. My dance with gravity has been a fun one. I have risen above some of life’s obstacles and been able to climb out of the holes that I’ve dug for myself. I’ve been blessed to have fallen in love.  And, if I can say, that after a lifetime of falling down, both literally and figuratively,  I only fail to get back up once, I’ll figure I came out of the whole thing a winner.