Two weeks ago yesterday, I made a trip to PetSmart for dog food. I ended up spending $150 on a dog bed, some new dog toys, miscellaneous dog paraphernalia, and a plaid collar with a sparkly bow for Flannery to wear to the Christmas party I was planning for the following weekend. Upon arriving home, I hauled half the stuff upstairs, leaving the sixteen-pound bag of dog food and the fluffy dog bed at the base of the stairs. I planned to carry them up when I took Flannery out just moments later.

I harnessed up my puppy and she dragged me down the stairs and out the door, eager to make her mark along her usual potty route. When we returned, I unhooked her leash and picked up the dog bed, juggling it along with the bag of food and began to hurry up my clanky iron staircase. Why I was in such a hurry, I cannot say, but I can tell you the outcome of my haste. My right toe caught the lip of a stair and I lunged forward – the added weight of the dog food and the awkwardness of the fluffy bed propelling me toward the landing and the brick wall behind it. Had I tripped just one stair higher, I would have smashed my head into that wall, but I had just enough time to stumble, halting my forward propulsion and slamming my right knee into the top stair as I dropped the dog food and the fluffy bed onto the landing.

Given that my staircase is industrial iron and the walls of the stairwell concrete and brick, you can imagine the sound I made as I came crashing down. You can also imagine the aftermath – a startled puppy licking my face as I caught my breath and assessed the damages. Once you are over the age of say, ten, there are few experiences more humbling than falling down. One moment you are going about your day and the next you are flat on the ground, spread eagle in an intersection, splayed out across your staircase with a dog licking your face. My knee throbbed, my palms were sore, but I was thankful I hadn’t careened into a brick wall. It could have been much worse.

I scooped up the bed and the food, clicked my tongue for Flannery to follow me, and slunk into my condo. The next day, I felt the need to confess my fall. I told my trainer Matt and my training partner Katie about it. It’s like I needed someone to know about my haste, my ineptitude, my inelegance. I needed them to imagine the purpling bruises lurking below my black Lululemon leggings. If a thirty-five-year-old woman falls in her staircase and there is no one to witness it but her dog – did it really happen?

Four days later, around 3 pm, the sun peeked out from the clouds for the first time in days. “Flann!” I yelled. Yes, I actually yelled. “We have to go outside! There’s sun!” Ten minutes into our walk, my foot skidded on black ice. “Close one,” I thought, and sidestepped onto what appeared to be gravel. It was gravel. Ice covered gravel. Milliseconds later, I was on the ground – my left knee taking the brunt of the fall, followed by my left hip and shoulder. Once again, I was laid out, Flannery’s nose in my face. I wallowed on the ground, looking for all the world like a fish out of water. My left knee screamed as I struggled to get up before anyone saw me. Hours later I told my mom about the fall. “That’s twice in five days!” I told her over the phone. “My left knee is a mess!” Nothing was broken, and only my knee and ego were bruised. It could have been much worse.

The next day, I drove to my parents to change my clothes and relax for a few minutes before going to teach dance. They watch Flannery for me during the day and, as I made my way up I-57, I thought about how long the week had been, how short the days were, and how seeing Flannery and her sister would be the boost I needed to get through the rest of my day. I parked, jumped out of my car, and walked quickly up the steps. As I put my key in the lock, I could hear the puppies scratching at the door, their deepening “woofs” intensifying as they heard my voice. I opened the door and they crowded around my legs as I greeted them with my usual “Hi puppies! How was your day?” In less than a second, Flannery slipped around my legs, and instead of tumbling back in after me, she darted down the stairs. My dog is, as my great grandmother would say, a “bold pig.” She is the instigator, and her sister is always a few steps behind. As I turned to shout after Flannery, Liffey ran out too.

I can’t say how long the entire incident lasted. Seconds, likely, although it felt like an eternity. What unfolded was every pet owner’s worst nightmare. Liffey turned left down the sidewalk while Flannery ran into the street – directly into the path of a silver SUV whose driver never could have seen her coming. I’m sure that my screams were unearthly, and Flannery’s certainly were as I tore toward the street – certain I would be picking her crumpled, bloodied body off the ground. Miraculously, in my hazy, adrenaline-drunk line of vision, Flannery appeared – sprinting, howling, and bleeding from her mouth and nose. I caught up with her at my parents back gate, hit my knees, scooped her up, and turned toward my car – yelling to anyone who could hear that I needed to get her to the vet. My mom had run after Liffey, so my parents’ neighbor Suzanne wrapped Flann in a blanket and got into my backseat, keeping all of us calm as I drove to the vet in a state of total and complete terror.

Flannery survived with – truly miraculously – no lasting side effects. She did have life-threatening pulmonary contusions, a pneumothorax, and a concussion, but she had no broken bones, no neurological defects, no ruptured organs, and no TBI or spinal injury. It could have been much worse.

In the moments after they took her from me in the vet’s office, however, I couldn’t have possibly imagined such an outcome. I sat in a stiff plastic chair, shaking from fear, adrenaline, guilt, and cold (I had shed my coat, hat, and scarf on my parents’ front lawn in an attempt to run faster). As I waited for any news at all, I became dimly aware of my throbbing left knee. I looked down to find my tights sticking to scraped, bloodied skin where my knee hit the ground as I picked up Flannery’s trembling, terrified little body. I pulled on my tights to feel the sting. The pain grounded me. It brought me back to the day before when I was out walking her and six days before when she licked my face in my stairwell. This moment was a humbling moment. I had fallen hard and the only question was how difficult it was going to be for me to get back up again – and if I’d have my dog to help me do it.

After five hours at her vet where they were able to stabilize her vitals and control her shock, Flannery was transferred to an emergency vet in the city where she could have round the clock care. It would be twenty-four hours before I was fairly confident she would survive and forty-eight before I could bring her home. While she is almost back to her spunky self, I’m not sure that I am, and I know I haven’t fully processed the experience.

What I do know is that sometimes in life, we fall. Hard. We’re going along, living, whining about some minor inconvenience and then, suddenly, we’re on the ground – bruised and bloodied. There are the times when no one is witness to our falls – when they go unnoticed, and we must pick ourselves back up – confessing them later just to make them real. Then there are the times when our falls are catastrophic, overwhelming, accidental – when we suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in such monumental ways that we can’t help but be humbled. Humbled by the kindness of others, the marvels of modern medicine, the cruel or miraculous vagaries of this life.

Today, as I got down on the ground to dig Flannery’s toy out from under my couch, I winced as I put pressure on my left knee and then I smiled and she pushed her face into mine. It could have been much worse.