After The Fall.

By Jacqueline Millstein

In the late 1960s, when I was bicycling with a friend, I turned around to tell her something. Easily distracted, I didn’t notice a car coming down the cross street. I crashed into it, was catapulted through the air and landed face down in the street. I walked away with some nasty bruises and bad case of road rash. At 15, I had ample cartilage in my joints and was, well, 15.

Today, I take walking very seriously, constantly checking for even the most infinitesimal cracks in the sidewalk that might be my downfall (literally and figuratively). And don’t get me started on raised curbs, potholes, subway grates and slippery cobblestones. I have been known to hold up my hand like a school crossing guard in front of complete strangers who aren’t paying adequate attention to point out a broken patch on a walkway.

My shoemaker has become as important to my physical health as my cardiologist and pulmonologist. Every pair of new shoes goes straight to his shop for the application of skid-proof ribbed soles. Not only do they make walking safer, but they increase the lifespan of the shoes exponentially. He also taught me that you can cut off a lift from a high heel without affecting the balance of the shoe. His precision skills made it comfortable to dance the night away in my favorite Ferragamos.

Hotel bathrooms with marble floors are especially challenging. A red flashing light should go off when you walk out of the shower along with an alarm. “Warning! Warning! There are two 2-inch puddles adjacent to the shower! We repeat: two puddles!”

Many in my circle of similarly aged friends have become bionic. New knees, new hips – it’s often the topic of conversation over dinner. We maintain a death grip on handrails when walking down a flight of stairs. We do yoga and cardio, lift weights and take supplements. No one wants to be a statistic, as we collectively think of ourselves as forever middle-aged. The prevailing theory being that middle age is whatever age we are now, and you disagree at your peril.

My young grandsons play rough. They will tumble on their marble foyer, and we’ll hear the thunk. Then they’ll stand up, giggle and yell “I’m okay!” When they play soccer and hit the ball with their heads, I cringe. And, like every other Jewish grandmother, I hope they never want to play football.

I don’t even think the most esteemed medical journals have determined an exact age when a simple fall becomes a major event. 60? 70? 80? You just know that you have arrived at that juncture when you start to pay attention to falling “correctly.” That’s a thing. Bracing yourself so that the impact does not injure a part of you that you really depend upon. Dark humor indeed.

So, what is the answer? I haven’t a clue. What I do know is that our credo is “If not now, when.” We book trips that in a few years might be considered too arduous. We have crawled inside the Pyramids at Giza, climbed to the top of Petra and ziplined through the Cambodian jungle. I did ask a doctor whose advice is always spot on what the secret to longevity was.

He said: “Don’t fall.”

Jacqueline is an accomplished woman and a good friend of Lustre.