come back come back come back

I walk, or I ride a bike. For most of my journeys I’m self-propelled by my own limbs. Even when Julia and I travel by car, there’s often a long walk at the end of it, hiking up into the hills. Thomas, who is 88 and has walked his life's duration, now sits all day in a chair by his hospital bed.

I asked him: how can you come to terms with this?

He said he remembered when his wife was expecting their child, he had to walk to the hospital – a journey of several miles. The baby was a late arrival and he made the journey four times – about 40 miles by foot.

I asked him my question again.

He told me about his daughter’s first steps. And then of his own disastrous first memory of walking. His mother was scrubbing the kitchen floor. There was a bucket of boiling water. He recalled the bucket, gesturing the rising steam. He stumbled into it. Remembered the spill, his mother’s shock. Happily he survived to toddle into more mischief.

I pressed him for a more direct answer. How do you deal with not being able to walk?

He said he remembered walking at night by the river in the village where he was born. The river sounded like talking. It seemed to say: come back come back come back.