The Call of the Wall and the Pain of the Sprain

L is the graceful one of the family...

We are a family of little hope.

I was out mowing the front lawn on Saturday and the kids were with me darting around where I was trying to mow, dead set on sacrificing a limb to the mower gods. For their safety, and mine (Stacy-wrath is a powerful motivator), I sent the kids to go play in the driveway and away from my mulching.L, bored with the lack of adrenaline inspired by riding her scooter around and around the minivan, decided to step up the excitement a notch. We have a cinder-block wall about waist high that separates our front yard from our neighbor's. It is an utterly irresistible balance-beam for those would-be gymnasts who have been warned repeatedly to stay off it. Out of the corner of my eye I watched L approach the wall a couple of times, shoot a glance in my direction and then back away. I tried to be more subtle in my watchings and made as if I were engrossed in the joys of my mowing. Soon enough her devious spirit took hold and she quickly scrambled up.

I surreptitiously watched her as she made her way, arms out-stretched, bobbing and jerking like a tight-rope walker with with alcohol issues, down the length of the wall. I took my eyes off her for a moment to tend to my mowing, and then when I looked back a half-second later she was no longer on the wall, but rather hovering beside it. In mid-air. Feet toward heaven. She remained locked in that suspended state for an eternity of milliseconds, before proceeding on that downward journey that gravity invites us all to enjoy. I turned my head again in an attempt to spare her the humiliation of watching her fall, knowing that if the results were catastrophic, I would know it soon enough. I head a dull splat and a winded "Oooff!" and looked back over. L's eyes were fixed on me, wide and panicked. She flopped instantly back up onto her feet like some marionette-master had jerked her from above. "What?" she said to me, in her best attempt at acting like nothing ever happened, as though through sheer force of unspoken denial she would somehow convince me that all was normal and uninteresting and that I should just continue on with my mowing and pay her no heed -- a junior Jedi waving her hand before my face and saying, "These are not the droids you're looking for," but not quite pulling it off. The glowing red scraps the length of her forearms did not bolster her in her attempted misdirection. But I had mercy on her. "I didn't say anything," I said to her third "What?"

Lesson Unlearend

Probably suspecting she didn't quite pull the wool over my eyes, she sheepishly we headed off for the house. Once inside a tender conscience and evidently a tender finger prompted a gradual, but eventually full confession to her mother. When I came in and was told what had happened, I showed L what true poker-faced deception is all about, and fawned over her like it was all new to me. The finger didn't look too bad, so we let it go.

Then on Sunday after church we took a family bike ride through the neighborhood and up to the high school where we raced around the parking lot chasing each other like WWII planes in a dog-fight. The aerial superiority was definitely on the side of the parents. N's training wheels kept coming off sending him into a tailspin, and on several occasions L managed to zig when she meant to zag a couple, leaving her in a smoking pile of rubble in the middle of some French hay field. The final time she bailed out of her stalling Mustang she managed to sustain further casualties to her already wounded hand. The war quickly ended and we all flew home amid tears and whimpers.

This afternoon I got a call from Stacy at work - the finger had remained swollen in the morning so she had taken L in to her doctor for a check out. The x-rays showed nothing broken, but indicated a nice healthy sprain. L is now the proud displayer of a finger brace with colorful binding tape, which is freely waved about for all to see. "What?" I ask whenever she flaunts it in front of me.