**When Helpers Need Help**Or It Is Much Easier to Give Than to Receive**

I love to be the person to whom others turn for help. It is fun to be able to offer a helping hand, or some babysitting, or some advice, or even the only meal I ever used to cook. (brown rice and black beans with some random veggies and, with a little luck, some tortillas) I was even able to offer some more exotic helping hands. I nursed Max W. when his mother was in the hospital with pneumonia when he was only a few weeks old. My friend B.'s daughter came to stay with us in the summer when her mother was slammed at work. The refugee kids lived with us and started their new lives without their parents, new country, new language. I fed and sat with an old man each week and listened attentively while he told me about this wonderful woman with a big smile who used to come and make him dinner. (me!) I took care of my friend's three darling daughters when she went to rehab and her frigging macaw who tried to eat me alive. (God rest his soul) I fixed up people's gardens. I took my dear Meghan out one afternoon or evening every week for eleven years. And we did have some really crazy times. I did night feedings of sick babies so their mothers could finally get a night's sleep. And on and on. I loved every minute of it.

A lot of help came my way financially because I never did figure out how to make money. In fact I was kind of a genius at doing things that I never earned a cent for doing.  That aside I was happy being the person to whom others could turn when they needed a favor.

When I broke my hip I had to learn how to accept help in every way. I don't know whether it was pride or pride mixed with some feminism, or ego that I had to release, but I had a great lesson in being unable to do anything for myself and I had great teachers of how to have nothing to give back but "Thank you".

I was in the parking area next to the marina where I was living on Richard's sail boat. I fell hard on the macadam and knew instantly that this was trouble. I had been for a long walk with Randie and her kids. The kids were tired and hungry and falling apart. I felt that I needed to get back to the boat. A young couple were walking by and rushed over to help me up. I told Randie to leave. She couldn't help me and do her baby at the same time. The young couple offered be my crutches while we went to the boat. It was a long walk and these strangers helped me all the way. They managed to pull the boat up close and get me into it. Then I called my daughter and told her that I thought I had broken my hip. I was so in shock that I just wanted to go to sleep. Everyone kept calling me and telling me to call an ambulance and I couldn't.

It didn't hurt if I had no weight on it. I had no health insurance and no money and didn't know that I could get help. Funny, this happened only a month before my medicare would start and was fortunately the first time I needed medical help. Finally someone called the emergency room and they said if it was broken and if I didn't put any weight on it, today, tomorrow, it didn't matter. I went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night I had to go to the head and I held myself up and hobbled down the boat and put the tiniest bit of weight on the leg and almost passed out from the pain. At that moment I knew for certain that I had a break. It was (Gracias a Dios) my first broken bone and I was about to be 65. Well, I had broken toes before, but they don't count.

More tomorrow about the humbling of Julie Pierce. How the mighty do fall and what good friends can do to soften that fall.