Learning How To Walk

When did I learn to walk? The awkward stance, a toddler’s uncertain step, stumbling, falling, getting up again until rhythm of feet and balance work in sequence, was that when I learned to walk? No. When did I learn to walk? Kindergarten marches, a military parade of sorts around a classroom, rhythm band instruments in hand, banging on toy cymbals and drums to the measured beat of feet and blare of prerecorded sound? No. When did I learn to walk? Was it the long hours in marching band practicing routines, memorizing music, and the beating of feet on hot pavement along humid parade routes on July mornings in hot woolen uniforms? No. When did I begin to learn to walk? From the moment I held your hand, strolling by the Strand Theater on the sidewalks of St. Paul, along the shores of Lake Como on Spring and Summer nights, through Rosedale, your hand in mine as we looked at engagement rings in jewelry store windows and dreamed dreams. I learned to walk in earnest down the aisle of St. Bridget of Sweden, into a new wedded life filled with wonder and love, the many walks of pregnancies, Pitocin drip walks down hospital corridors, during nights with restless infants, and sick children, to parks and baseball diamonds, plays and musicals, concerts and gymnasiums, graduations, weddings, funerals, grandchildren, all of them walks along the spherical path of life. To walk with you is to learn how to love, each measured step, a grace-filled journey to something greater, far beyond and far better than the stumbling steps that I could have made on my own. To walk with you, is to see the world with different eyes, colors bursting through the greys, warmth on the coldest of days, your voice floating, playing delightfully in the air alongside until the sound settles gently, gracefully in my ears. We have walked many steps together in life, my gait now not as steady, these days of uncertain limbs, joints and cane. In walking with you, new discoveries never end, new beginnings abound, and that with you, the first, and the finest of all teachers, learning to walk is never fully learned.