As I tumbled down the stairs

My next door neighbour had come to meet me to walk back to our grade five classroom at the school. It was spring in Newfoundland but we were still wearing our parkas and our royal blue garbadine uniforms tights. My mother had just finished feeding me soup. Our kitchen had been moved to the second floor of our house because there was a permanent leak on the ground floor. There was always a puddle of water at the foot of the stairs that my mother had to soak up with towels. Unable to fix the leak my father moved our kitchen and living room to the second floor and our bathrooms to the third floor.

On this day I was talking with Mom and Mary ready to go back to school. I was standing on the blue linoleum landing at the top of the stairs acting a little foolish and turning to say goodbye with a flourish when I tripped and rolled down the full flight of stairs to the concrete floor below. My little head and body was rolling. When I landed on the floor I looked up and saw my mother and Mary's face with looks of horror and mouths open in ovals. They were perfectly still at the top step. Laying on the ground looking up at them I could see this was bad. Then I stood up and I was fine. Everything was good. I walked up the stairs and back into our hall. The look on their faces shocked me as much as the roll down the stairs.  

As we stood there in our newly carpeted hall my mother checked me over and told Mary that I should stay home for the afternoon and she should go on to school and tell the teacher. Mary went off still in a semblance of shock. We were all just astounded, me by the fall itself and them for having witnessed it. And all three of us were shocked that I had not hurt myself. I still remember the rolling and the rumbling and the thump as I landed. My mother said thank goodness for the parka. 

Mom wanted to keep an eye on me. I was always happy to stay home from school. In fact as a small child I would feign a sore stomach often. I always liked my mother's full attention. And I could see her relief and I realized that I was lucky that nothing bad had happened other than the fright itself.

And this little tumble down the stairs has stayed with me all my life. It taught me simply not to carry on when you're at the top of a set of stairs. But more than that it taught me how things can change in just a second. How one minute you could be going off to school with your friend and in another it all changed. Things can happen in a split second. It is also one of the times I remember my mother really being afraid for me and just how much love she had for me. I don't remember that afternoon but I am sure I would have been coddled. 

That incident on the stairs has also taught me to recognize and appreciate love, grace and sheer good luck. That day I could have hit my head on the damp concrete at the bottom of the stairs and had a completely different life. But I was lucky and there was grace, so I stood up and got to stay home for the afternoon. And I think this is true in my life in general. I have worked hard but I have had so much love, so much grace and yes some luck. Nothing would have ever been possible without these things. The feeling of safety that my mother gave me that afternoon, the security of being looked after was formative in my life. When I look out at the world I see that not everybody gets that, and I feel lucky to have had it. And not everybody falls down a set of stairs and stands up without a bruise. Lucky again. 

And whether it is grace, or luck, or good fortune does not really matter to me. What matters to me is that I recognize that my good life has not been all about hard work and diligence. It is about all kinds of forces that I have no control over, that are outside myself. That in fact are little miracles that have surrounded and sustained me. And that brings me to the g word. You know, the one about being thankful, the one we are tired of hearing about. But it is a word that can change a life just for having paid attention to it. Research shows that writing down three things a day you are thankful makes you happier. 

I am happy that I never hurt myself that day, that I had my mother to love me so, and that at a very young age I learned the importance of holding the rail, and learned early to recognize grace and good luck in my life.