The Fall

There had been some fighting on the way to school, but it wasn’t bad. It was supposed to rain for much of the day, but that wasn’t bad either — a light drizzle, barely noticeable as I pulled the bike out and the kids piled onto it. We rode two blocks, then stopped to wait at an intersection for Grant and Elizabeth. Grant had texted me beforehand to coordinate this, but our coordination was imperfect, and as we waited there we all noticed that we were being drizzled upon and began to wonder whether Grant and Elizabeth had actually gotten there before us and were now further along the way to school. To the Little One the solution to this uncertainty was clear: We should leave, now, and just when I decided she was probably right the Big One said “there they are,” and we all looked back to watch the two of them riding their bikes across the intersection towards us. Elizabeth seemed delighted to see us and began talking immediately about Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which she had apparently been reading and had found hilarious. My kids didn’t seem to care (I remember Mr. Popper’s Penguins only vaguely, and they remember it not at all), but I played along as we rolled slowly east all the way to Rochester Ave. Then we dropped through Lincoln Terrace Park, the Big One urging us to ride the extra-long route that weaves down into the meadow, then up towards the barbecuing area, before swooping back down past the playground. At this point the Little One became animated, demanding that we “please go,” and eventually I said I wasn’t taking any more requests this morning and focused my attention on just getting everyone to school.

The Little One got off the bike and walked into school without acknowledging my presence, but the Big One gave me a big hug. I gave fist bumps to Elizabeth and Grant, then rode off, up the incline towards East New York Avenue. “This light is all messed up,” I thought when I got there. The walk sign beckoned me northward, across East New York Avenue, but eastbound cars continued to drive through the intersection. It’s like this basically every day, cars blowing this particular red light, which is immediately in front of two public elementary schools and at least two private preschools. I didn’t let it heat me up; instead I waited for the offending cars to pass, then rode across East New York Ave and continued up Rochester.

Rochester Avenue, between New York Avenue and Eastern Parkway, is probably the least friendly road I ride on regularly. It has two-way automobile traffic and curbside parking on both sides, and the roadway just isn’t wide enough for all of that and a bike. Let alone a big e-cargo bike, though I try to use that factor to my advantage by tapping its controller into “TURBO” mode so that I can fly up the hill as quickly as possible. It’s an imperfect strategy, partly because cars still want to pass me as they speed from stoplight to stoplight, and partly because they are then inevitably stopped at one of those stoplights, leading me to pass them, and so on. The whole situation is sketchy, and I don’t like doing it alone, and I definitely don’t like doing it with the kids; when I’m with them we ride through Lincoln Terrace Park, like we did on the way to school. But when I’m alone, riding home from drop-off, I usually bite the bullet, and contend with the traffic, and do my best to get neither hurt nor overly involved in the absurdity of it all.

The traffic was normal, which is to say that it was bad. At President Street a red light presented itself, and I pulled up to the light, or more precisely to my place in the line at the light, behind and to the right of a white Ford Explorer. The Explorer was maybe the third car waiting in line for the light to change. To my right, parked at the curb, was a big Verizon truck. If I were riding my commuter bike, which is lighter and much more flickable than the e-cargo bike, then I would have hopped up onto the curb, riding on the sidewalk until there was a gap where I could drop back onto the street. Or maybe I would have pulled to the left of the Explorer, riding the wrong way into oncoming traffic; this is an especially dangerous move, but one that I’ve been known to pull when I’m riding alone. Anyway, I did not do these particular things on this particular day. I waited there, kind of hoping that the Explorer would pull a little to its left so I could squeeze through, but waiting my turn nonetheless.

It was immediately obvious what had happened, even though I didn’t anticipate it and didn’t really see it happen either. Everything seemed fine, normal, and then there was a crash just to my left, and the Explorer bounced to its right, into me, pinning me up against the Verizon truck. These actions seemed to occur simultaneously, in a single event; first I was sitting there waiting, and then I was pinched between a sport utility vehicle and an actual utility vehicle. I could not tell who else was involved, but I assumed that someone had hit the Explorer hard, and that whoever was in the Explorer might have been injured and was probably a little shaken up. I was a little shaken up — I noticed that my knee was bleeding — and I very much wanted not to be pinned there.

So I called to the Explorer driver not to move their car yet, and I wriggled myself, and then the cargo bike, out from where we were pinned. Taking a step back, I could see the other car that was involved in the crash, which had rolled onto its passenger side such that I was looking at its undercarriage. I think one of its wheels was slowly spinning, and its engine was definitely running, and it occurred to me that I didn’t really want to be nearby a running engine that had just rolled onto its side. I also didn’t want to be near its driver, though the reasons for that were a little less clear. I looked down at my knee, which had a fairly large cut in it but was not bleeding much. I touched it (it hurt, but not that bad), and tried to think about whether anything else hurt (nothing seemed to), and began to reconcile myself with the day that was to come.

It was in the ambulance that I realized this was probably the first day of fall. This was September tenth, a culturally aseasonal Wednesday about halfway between the first day of school and the equinox. I had been clinging to the idea that I was still living in summer, trying to squeeze its last few moments out, but today was dreary and with the way my knee was looking I would probably have to take it easy for at least a few days. Whatever summery things I had hoped to get done this year should be assumed lost. For planning purposes, I was living in autumn.

Somehow I fell into sync with this reality almost immediately; I rolled with it, played along with the new script that I had been presented with. I sat for a minute in the ambulance that the rolled-over driver was in; she didn’t acknowledge me and seemed utterly unaware of the conditions under which she had caused the crash. Then I was moved to my own ambulance, which hung out at the scene long enough for the cops to come and get my statement. Then they, the ambulance crew, took me to the emergency room closest to our house. It was a Wednesday morning, too early for ERs to be very chaotic, and sure enough the triage area was almost boring in its normal misery, its miserable normality. An odorous patient, apparently a regular, berated the staff to give him a sheet as he laid on a stretcher near the admittedly drafty entrance. The woman in front of him, who was very frail and had apparently brought with her a gallon-sized Ziploc bag full of assorted pills, seemed to be refusing treatment while simultaneously requesting and utilizing a barf bag. I sat awkwardly in a chair next to her, waiting to be triaged. My ambulance team milled nearby, chatting as if it were their first time interacting with one another, just two random New Yorkers who happened to be paired up for the morning. The triage nurse smiled as she asked me her intake questions, glancing up and down the hallway and batting her dramatically large eyelashes at nobody in particular. It didn’t take a long time, but it didn’t take a short time either. Every few minutes I stood up so that someone could push a stretcher past my bandaged left leg.

Then I was moved to another waiting room, this one marked “FAST TRACK,” where I sat in another chair for a while. I inquired about coffee (I had not had any) and was told I should wait to see a doctor first, which I thought was reasonable and not particularly onerous. My chair wobbled but was not uncomfortable. The doctor saw me, ordered an x-ray, waited for me to complete the x-ray, and then pointed me vaguely towards the place where I could get a coffee, which was in the lobby of the next building over. Getting there required me to leave the ER, which I did without really knowing where I was going, but the whole excursion ended up being extremely normal and vaguely rejuvenating. The coffee procurement place was a little bodega inside the hospital. I found it easily, guided by a few other hospital employees, and then found myself right at home in its typically New York layout, styling, and selection. I got my coffee — a canned espresso and cream, cold, bought two in a single transaction and consumed in a couple of efficient but pleasant gulps as I walked back to the “FAST TRACK” door. The caffeine had begun to kick in when I was eventually called and taken back to an exam room by a PA who cleaned, numbed, and tied seven stitches into the laceration on my kneecap. We talked about mountain biking, and California, and the size of the sutures he was using (3-0), and the kind of stitches he was tying (two horizontal mattresses plus five simple stitches). I have no idea what his name was, but I did learn that he started at the hospital late in 2020. “Or, I guess it was early 2021,” he corrected himself.

It was, in all, an almost pleasant experience. Fall had fallen, and I fell willingly along with it.

One of the things I’ve been working on over the past couple of months is my ability to describe sensory experiences. I spent a good chunk of the summer trying to explain the sensation of drinking lemonade — the flavors, partly, but also my own mouth’s complex and seemingly automatic reactions to each sip. Now, as autumn set in, I found myself methodically eating Concord grapes, focusing on how their textures and flavors ricochet off of one another. I cannot say for certain why I’ve been working on this; surely some of it is rooted in a personal desire to enjoy seasonally appropriate libations. But there’s another part that has to do with understanding how and why I perceive the world the way I do. “Maybe if I can describe what I’m feeling,” I think, “if I really put my finger on the rhythms of this experience, then it’ll be easier for me to move in time with it.”

It doesn’t honestly make a ton of sense, but I’ve found myself returning to it again and again. Recently, after stumbling across a pint of Concord grapes at the “Taste NY” rest stop on the Taconic Parkway, I found myself working through the grapes like one should (but I never do) eat popcorn. I wrote: