When I was Mom’s-waist-high years old (don’t ask me for an actual age— I don’t remember), I began taking walks with my mother every day. We walked up the dead-end street, around the eight-house neighborhood a couple times, then back home. Eventually that turned into walking down the hill through the woods to the main road, and finally a trek to the Katy Trail, where we strolled under cottonwood trees, past shabby houses damaged from the flood of ’93, and through picturesque Midwest forest. In short, I have been walking with her every day since I was so small that two of my steps equaled one of hers.
I wrote about this last summer, when I hiked about 50 miles on the Katy Trail:
“…I found myself in territory as familiar to me as my own reflection. For most of my childhood, I lived within five blocks of the Katy Trail. When I got old enough, Mom took me on a walk down to it and back every evening. At first we’d walk to the entrance by the railroad ties and turn back. As I got older and my legs lengthened, we walked further. We turned at the border of the woods, then the old bridge, then the lone tree, then the bend in the trail. I passed all of these in turn, turning over details in my mind as I saw them. There, the white black-roofed house with the “Condemned” signs that had been there since I was a kid. There, the shed with a wooden goose picture nailed to the side. There, the row of cottonwoods, gray in this light, but familiar to me in every light. The best is mid-afternoon on a summer day, when the sky is creamy blue— then the leaves glitter in the sunshine, dancing on their long stems in every breath of wind with a clattering rustle.
I thought of the conversations that Mom and I had on this stretch of trail. At first I talked about names that rhymed, and made her listen to extensive genealogies of the story characters I had made up. I see myself growing up through those conversations on every topic imaginable: Star Trek theology, complaints about my siblings, finances, my crushes, ACT scores, my desire to write a novel and then the novel that I wrote, God, life, love. It was here that my sister wrecked her bike and had to be rushed to the hospital for plastic surgery, here that I walked in baby steps with Mom as she recovered from a grand mal seizure, here that I decided I wasn’t going to college. It was here that Mom and I walked under a gray sky and talked about the devastating news that we had to move from the house that had been home to us for sixteen years.
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| I just realized that I have no good pictures of Mom and me. Hmm… |
Mom walked the last mile [of the hike] with me, just like we’ve been doing since I was barely as tall as her waist, right in step with each other. It was a perfect way to end my hike.”
As most of you know, my mom has spent the last month in and out of the hospital. In the midst of befuddled doctors, violent sickness and emotional trauma, there seemed no end in sight. Today, Dad and Mom and I visited the Missouri River for a picnic. Mom and I walked, very slowly, along the river bank, talking about hiking and travel and how she’s getting better. Here’s to another Mother’s Day (a little early), to a woman who is not only my mom, but my best friend.
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