One rainy evening in November, I was carrying my eighteen-month- old daughter home from nursery school when I had a momentous experience. I'd had a long, hard, frustrating day at work and I was struggling to cope with her bag of laundry, several sacks of groceries, and my own satchel of work-related materials. I was tired and cross and not looking forward to making dinner or getting my feisty toddler ready for bed.
Just as we were descending the cement stairs that led to the main street, it happened. I slipped. I'm still not sure just how I did it, but I managed to do it very well indeed. Down I went like a ton of bricks, landing squarely on both knees. Groceries, books and papers went flying, cabbages and broken eggs tumbling down the stairs. Dirty diapers, dungarees and bibs bestrewed the ground. But I managed to hold onto my baby.
My right knee was bleeding so badly that the blood pooled in my shoe and stuck to my tights, which were in shreds at both knees. My left knee had hit a stone and had an even deeper gash than the right. My carton of eggs was a mess of broken shells and slime and all the fruit I'd bought was bruised. But I walked the rest of the way home in a state of awe, tears of gratitude running down my face: it could have been so much worse. There was not a scratch on my baby. She hadn't been hurt or upset in the slightest and, if anything, seemed to think I'd been playing with her when we hit the road, so to speak.
The scars are still there: two shockingly white, thickened callouses across both knees that remind me of that wonderful day when I went down, but my baby stayed safe. I wear them with pride.
