by Carolyn Paradis

Created on: February 17, 2009

I've fallen in front of people several times. Two of these stick out in my memory. The first was simply embarrassing.

It was in junior high school, during choir practice. I had worn a tight jumper that hot spring day, and I'd just started my monthly. I remember feeling a bit woozy, then there was a sensation of falling through a spinning tunnel, complete with flashing lights and a whooshing noise. Then a loud crashing sound which was probably the metal chairs being knocked aside as I fell. My next awareness was of feet, all around me. Loud voices. Hands. The choirmaster's authoritative voice issuing loud instructions; "Give her air! Take your seats - Mary, go get the nurse!"

After I'd been given water and an aspirin, I returned to choir practice, trying to ignore the stares and whispers. The choirmaster made it all okay again by saying, "Let's start again, and this time try not to put anyone to sleep."

The other fall I will never forget, for it changed my life.

After many years raising my sons alone, I'd finally met my soul-mate. We'd met at a dance, then again by happy accident when I happened to take my car for a tuneup at the shop he owned. We began by having coffee together, then meeting at a barn raising, we went to movies, he met my family, and finally I started inviting him to my house for dinner. We had quickly become good friends, but nothing was happening in the romance department. I was so much in love with him I couldn't stand it when he went home after dinner, without even a hug. Friends told me to hang in there, but I was afraid he saw me only as a friend, and I was several years older than him.

I loved taking my sons camping, and as my new friend, Henry, had a camper van I suggested we meet at a remote campground for a weekend of fishing and exploring. I took my tent, he took his camper. After my son was asleep in the tent, we sat around the campfire talking and drinking coffee.

Suddenly there was a loud crack as the legs of my metal camp chair broke. I tumbled backward down a slight hill, landing face up in the leaves. Staring up through the cedar branches at the stars. Wishing I could just disappear into the night, never to be seen again. Henry's dear face appeared above me, and he looked so scared I had to laugh. He was asking me over and over if I was all right, and I was saying, "I'm fine, just embarrassed", when he started laughing. He pointed at my coffee cup, which I was clutching to my stomach. "You didn't spill a drop!" This seemed funny to me too, and when he pulled me up he hugged me as we both laughed. And the rest is history.

He swears to this day that was when he fell in love with me. Would I go back to that long ago campfire and change to a sturdier chair? Not a chance. It's now 16 years later and we are happily married. Yes, we still go camping all the time, and he often reminds me of that time I fell, head over heels down that hill, and how he fell too.

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