The pride before the fall

A month later it would have made a good Halloween costume—torn, tattered, bloody clothing, a bleeding head wound that later morphed into a blackened eye the size of sub-Saharan Africa on a desk-top globe and then a deep purple bruise with tinges of jaundiced yellow.

I was riding my bike on a clear sunny day— a day with historic resonance. September 11. I was feeling glad, even a little rebellious, not to be in the city on this day. I no longer felt the need to be there. The visceral pull of souls that I had felt in previous years had faded with time, the great wound-healer. Politicians were filling the void at One and Two World Trade Center.

The reading of names continues to ring meaningfully to family members and friends of the deceased. It will remain a necessary tradition of our culture, a culture that values the individual life. But I was moving on, away from the torture of that time and place, into a solitary peace on the river, 100 miles from Ground Zero.

In a moment of inattention I was down on the pavement head first, a smack of skull on blacktop, a twisting torso, scraped skin, bruised bone. “Nothing broken” was my first conscious thought as I untangled from the Rubik’s cube of bike and dog leash and limbs.

The dog looked at me as if to say “Whose walk is this?” It is a morning ritual for us, to ride along the river down in the flats of Narrowsburg. I keep him leashed until the far end of Delaware Drive, where vehicles are rarely encountered. I balance the bike with one hand on the handlebars, his leash in the other hand, and I am vigilant about his need to sniff and, sometimes, to etcetera.

He tests my training when a squirrel appears too close or when another dog dares to share the roadway. “Stay” is the only command he reliably acknowledges. Sometimes “quiet” will elicit the appropriate silence, but not always. This time I was bidding him onward with a promise to visit Gigi, the Yorkshire Terrier down the road, as I took hold of both handlebars with the leash in my left hand. At that moment of delicate balance, and barely moving forward, Aengus picked up an irresistable scent and lunged to the left. The handlebars turned suddenly and I went down, head first.

Soon, Aengus got his chance to visit Gigi as I sought medical attention from her mistress, Carol Creamer, a neighbor with nursing credentials. Everyone should have at least one of those in their neighborhood.

As Carol’s husband Bernie cheered me with witty remarks (and predictions of this column), Carol cleansed and bandaged and iced and medicated me. Settled safely in their dining room, I could not avoid the tears, nor the deep ache in my heart. Was it the souls I had abandoned speaking to me, I wondered? Or was it the only way I could weep on September 11, seven years later? I was crying for my own wounds now, my own fall, my own survival.

I may be too close to this event to see it clearly, but I think it held a warning more significant than the use of helmets while riding. I was feeling a kind of pride before this fall. Pride that I had survived the need to mourn the awful pain of that day. I had felt victorious over the trauma. But the trauma is still very real, for all of us. And the day of mourning is still necessary, however we choose to experience it.

I wore the black eye proudly for a week, offering it no makeup. This weekend I bought a helmet for my next ride along the flats.

- Cass Collins