Our first two days in Northern California were filled with palm trees, rainbows, and loving grandparents. On the morning of the third day – the day we would leave the comfort of the grandparents’ house and move into our rental house in Berkeley – I fell down the stairs.
As Mick Jagger said (or was it Richard Nixon?): “The honeymoon don’t last forever, kid.”
It was a stupid misstep that I’ve replayed in my head a dozen times: I was walking down the stairs of my in-laws’ house early in the morning, carrying our two-year-old daughter. It was dark. Assuming I was on the ground, I missed the final step and came crashing down onto a tile floor. My daughter was fine, but because I’d focused on holding onto her instead of cushioning my fall, I was not.
