For most of us, our days are routine: we get up, do our work, live our lives and make plans with the expectation that tomorrow will bring pretty much what we expect it will. And then one day things are going along exactly as expected and WHAM out of the blue something happens that completely changes everything.Sometimes, like today, that something literally falls right out of the sky.

Today began as one of those unscripted, unstructured, nothing but lunch planned days. My favorite kind. I had taken a break from the heap of picture books I’d pulled off my shelves over coffee this morning, and was standing at the dining room table going through the mail when I glanced up to see Rusnati, my housekeeper, running full stop toward the house from the back of the garden.

Rusnati is short, just over 4 feet tall and  round. (Think “Weebles” those roly playskool people and their hard-plastic town and garage and houses?-my kids loved them.) Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down. They don’t run either.

I stood ,  flabbergasted at the sight of Rusnati running. Wow! could she run! But why? There had to be something–something bad to get her running so fast.  Then I freaked and ran to meet her.

“Warjo!” she panted, pointing back to the corner of the yard. “Warjo @#$#@$ (something I couldn’t understand or translate but that sounded like “potong” which means cut and something about his arm.

I looked where she was pointing. Warjo, our pool man, was face up on the ground beneath the mango tree with his head in the ginger stalks. My heart busted into the High School “fight” theme.  No blood, I willed, not wanting to see his arm cut off. Him bleeding out in our yard.

Rusnati was sort of pulling me toward him, as a kid does a mother. Who resigned and made me the mom? I wanted to ask. I wanted to pull back like another kid would. Instead I prayed: Please don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. And no blood. Please no blood.

I didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to see what I might see. I do not enjoy horror movies.

Warjo heard me call him and tried to raise himself up, or tried to raise his hand. But his hand didn’t come up, only his head and shoulder did. The arm dangled.

“Rusak, munkin” Rusnati said. Maybe broken.

Maybe???

I wracked my brain for for recollections of hospital dramas. I so wanted to channel McHero.

“Don’t more!” I ordered. Quickly adding the smidge of Indonesian I could muster. “Tunguh,” wait.

Warjo waited…not much else he could do. And so did everyone else. Rusnati, Aan, Rohemon, the security guards, they all probably had as much, if not more, medical experience than I did and they were waiting for me to give orders.

It was my house, my garden, my tree Warjo had fallen from. My problem to solve. So I barked orders (not consisely or in any specific language, it was more jestures mixed with jibberish). We tied Warjo’s upper body in a sarong and 4 guys pulled/pushed him to a sitting position. Sweat rained down his face and chest. His eyes were wild. They asked if he could walk. Got him to his feet. Warjo tried a step but his body just quivered like jelly.  So they carried him to the car and settled him in.

Turns out Warjo’s arm was broken clean through. A ragged, jagged break that requires surgery and immobilization. He was checked into the hospital and will be operated on tomorrow, a pin inserted to set the bone, several months recovery, bills, loss of work–not to mention what the fall may have done to his guts, back, him…

We called his family while waiting for treatment.Warjo’s wife and only son came. Shortly after, in ones and twos, others arrived—friends, family, neighbors—until Warjo had about 15 visitors. He’s not alone. But, what  now?

With the crack of a branch, this bright blue day, which started out so like so many others has changed Warjo’s life, and his families, an ours too. One hopes it’s only a temporary change. What if it isn’t?

What about when our out of the blue day arrives?

Whenever someone learns I’m a writer living in Indonesia, they inevitably remark about the fabulous stories I must be writing about my adventures, or how inspiration it must be. To which I usually respond, “Someday,” which in Bahasa Indonesia would be the catch all word for “not yet, belum.

For me fiction is reflective. Fiction comes with time: from the past, memories, from what remains. Non-fiction is immediate. Although good non-fiction, too, takes time, time to reflect, draw conclusions and get a distance away so as to see larger pictures.

When I was not writing because life interrupted, my friend Dick called it “filling my writer’s well.” Hearing that always made me feel better, and more importantly, gave me hope that the writing would come.

Presently, I’m filling my writer’s well in South Africa….

Never in a zillion “what ifs” did I ever imagine I’d be writing that—In South Africa—let alone living it! And because I’m loving filling my well and don’t want to stop for a moment. I’m going to pull a Joe Friday and “stick to the facts, Ma’am.”

Fact: Curtis and I flew from Jakarta to Johannesburg Thursday, arrived Friday afternoon.

Fact: We are here visiting our friends Shona and Charles Mason, South Africans living in Jakarta. Good friends, who enticed us to come for holiday.

Fact: Charles, his 2 cousins, and a group of 8 others have been, for the past 14 days cycling through South Africa on a charity ride—when they finish they will have cycled 1700 km and raised thousands for charities. Each day they ride to a designated spot—most days well over 100 km— and present a check to a local charity. The amount they raise is matched by ENGEN Petrol Company. Today is the last day of that challenging (to say the least) ride. Charles has been blogging his ride. Check it out: Charles Big Ride SA Ride:

Fact: The main reason we are in South Africa at this particular time is that we have signed up to Ride THE ARGUS, a 109 km bike ride along the wild, spectacular coastline of the Cape of South Africa.

Fact: 35,000-40,000 people will ride THE ARGUS, the largest individually timed race/ride in the world!

Fact: I have not even been on the seat of a bike in at least five, (5) years.

Fact: It is very very windy today and I have heard stories of what the wind does….blows bikes off the road…blows bikers into each other.

Fact: The delivered our rented bikes and helmets today and I am very very nervous.

I’m writing from the Singapore Airlines lounge in Singapore where I’m sitting, enjoying a snack, and taking it easy for the first time in days. You know how it is before a big trip? All the planning. The packing. The worrying over what needs to get done before the trip, for the trip? It can make you crazy…

This is the only excuse I have for racing into Jakarta’s lux megamall, Grand Indonesia, a couple of days ago, without my PHONE.  (Don’t laugh. I know what you’re thinking: Big deal, will it hurt to go a few hours without being connected via phone?)

Not having my phone wouldn’t have bothered me one little bit—if it weren’t for Aan. I don’t drive in Jakarta, Aan does. Over the years, he and I have developed an efficient drop-off/pick-up system. It works like this: Aan drives me to a mall or shop entrance. We both note the place and agree where we will meet up. Then Aan drives off and I go about my business. When I’m finished with whatever I’m doing, I give him a call and he picks me up. Simple—except if I forget my phone…

I didn’t realize I’d forgotten my phone until I was ready to go and began digging around in my humongous purse for it. I knew instantly it was In the car. I’d been checking my e-mail as we drove and must have left it on the seat. My only hope was that someone called me and Aan heard the phone ring and realized I’d left it. Or, that he’d spotted it on my seat. If not, he’d never realize I was phoneless and come looking. Instead he would sit wherever he was, waiting and waiting and waiting for my call.

I scurried back to our appointed meeting place and looked around. No familiar, most common of all-silver mini-vans hanging about. Might he be inside watching for me?. If he realized I didn’t have my phone, he might come inside to wait an watch for me. It was air-conditioned… Alas, there was nary a a slight, big-eyed, spikey-haired Aan in sight.

Not everyone in Jakarta uses our system. Some use the tried and true Car Call method. Established long before hand phones became common, Car Call is exactly that. When a patron is ready to be picked up, he or she goes to the Car Call desk and tells the attendant the driver’s name and place of employment. For instance, if I were to call Aan, I would say. “Aan, dari BP” (“dari” means from or with) and the attendant calls that out over the loud speakers, which sounds in the garage, and soon he’d drive up to fetch me.

Unfortunately, using the Car Call is not our system. It’s not many drivers favorite system as it means the driver has to park in the garage, within ear shot of the speakers. He can’t eat, or smoke, or hang with friends. And worse, he might have to stay in the dreaded underground garage. Dreaded because several Jakarta hotel bombings ago, drivers were trapped underground in a garage. Aan does not like those cursed garages.

I tried Car Call anyway, hoping, with little hope, that Grand Indonesian was one of those places where Aan likes to park near the speakers. And I waited.

I tried Car Call again. And I waited…and waited.

And while I waited, I didn’t just wait, I came up with a plan. I could ask someone to borrow his or her phone and call Curtis at work and ask him to call Aan. Or I could call Rusnati at home and ask her to call Aan. Or, if I knew Aan’s number, I could call him myself.

I was mustering up enough words to ask one of the mall employees if I could use  precious phone minutes for an emergency (how do you say “emergency” in Bahasa Indonesia?And should I pretend to be sick or dying) our lovely, silver mini-van drove up. Yeah, Aan!

The van door was barely closed behind me when Aan started in on how I had forgotten my phone. How it had rung almost as soon as I’d left. How he had been back and forth looking for me, worrying about me… How he had gone into the mall asking employees if they had seen a tall, hair-less white lady in tan pants wandering around…How he’d given the Car Call attendant my description and told them to call me if they saw someone fitting my description. (I’m sure if he’d had a photo he would have shown around it ala every cop program ever aired, or made copies and posted them.)  It was a though I were a teen, being lectured by my adult. Blah, blah, blah….

Back home, Aan did the most “Dad” thing of all. He handed me a small piece of paper torn from his notebook. “Keep this in your purse,” he instructed. On the paper, in tiny, tidy letters, were written his name and phone number.

I felt like a kid, a silly kid, true. But also like a well-cared for kid.

I promise, Dad/Aan, I’ll never leave home without it!