A Shadow Skips Alongside Me

Walks at dawn in Seattle twenty years ago still shape my life, if not my legs.

Across the street from me, the outline of a figure skips along the sidewalks, opposite arms and knees in unison raised up toward the dimming moon. It’s early. Maybe 6 a.m. I’m roaming the hilly blocks of Seattle as a temporary transplant while my husband, Devin, is in the hospital waiting to undergo a more permanent transplant for his bone marrow.

Our three-year-old young son is back in our apartment, sleeping with his stuffed Mickey Mouse curled in his arms, while my mother-in-law watches the day unfold from the couch. She and her husband have been gracious and allow me this time before I report for duty as a caregiver to their son.

I bust out of the apartment. Also, out of my head. I need to be in my body in the same way my husband wants to be out of his. The days are long. They are numbered. I mean, for his program. We’re only on 9 of a possible 100 days in this program. I have to pace myself. The only way I know how to slow down in my real life is to speed up in my walking life. The two are not one in the same.

That’s when I glimpse the skipper. We’re out in the misty morn at the same time— before sunrise. Seattle is still new to me. This is before GPS. Technically, I don’t know my way around, but I will feel my way. It’s why my current husband, Mark, doesn’t always enjoy walking with me now. My feet tell me where to go. I am in my body so as not to be in the head or go crazy up there anyhow.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “When you walk, only walk.” I try adhering to his principles. Feet, soles touch the ground, except when I try out the skipping, which I’m kind of liking by now. It adds a new element to an unchanging, yet always evolving day. A little challenge to my thighs that have not already been pressed by the rise and fall of sightlines in Capitol Hill where we’re staying near the hospital’s locale.

After a long, windy walk this past weekend with Mark, I’m taken back to Seattle again. As Mark and I wrap up our trek and head to a newly opened coffee shop, I brashly profess my love for city walking. My brain fills with a fresh draft of life, overflowing with a frothy excitement. My heart bursts open from the oxygen flowing in and out.

I tell Mark, I think Seattle is where my morning walks started. Despite on occasion, being a morning person, going for runs on weekends as a young adult. The morning walks were codified, those I undertook in the PNW. It was September. There was no brightness of a new day to greet me. I was to be the cheery morning to greet Devin. And to do so, my feet needed to square up with my head.

Did I feel fear in those mornings? I was certainly not afraid of the neighborhood, but maybe whatever lay beyond in the life we had chosen, the life chosen for us.

The thing is I keep talking about getting into my body and away from my head. But that’s a lie.

The fact that my body was moving allowed for my mind to turn its gears. The walking was the grease in case I got stuck, which happened often. As arches flattened over rolling pavement, my consciousness was braving the seas of words and emotions, and at the same time my neural networks were sending out their signals for the day like a lighthouse making me aware of dangers that lay ahead. In that time, I wrote winding letters to my mother and began making little notations on subjects to write. I would push the boundaries of the 100 days in the same way Devin would. I would write 100 letters home.

And so, morning walks turned into chats with mind and soul tuning in with rapt attention, while the body braced for the winds blowing off the Puget Sound and the rains washing away my conscience from the night before. Valuing that alone time and those long and hilly square blocks that belonged to just me and the skipping shadow, I started each day anew.  

I have honed that practice over decades. Not the skipping, but the walking. If you’ve walked at my side, you know this to be true. I am not always present for you. I will tell you that outright. You know it because I’ll walk yards ahead of you (I’m sorry) or I’ll suddenly turn because a glint in the window might be something I need to see, or a sight will pique my curiosity and insert itself into writing later.  If you’ve injured yourself walking with me, it’s not you. It’s me. My head was probably working ahead of my limbs.

If you’re still able to keep up (there are some of you), thank you for being at my side. And if not, it’s not that I don’t want you there. My side needs to be somewhere else or possibly uncoupled in that moment.

I still imagine that dark silhouette some mornings, from a half a world away. The skipping was something you’d see a little kid doing up and down the street. Watching those shadows made me aware of my own. Watching that figure skip like a kid made me feel childish, so small in a world I didn’t know. But also, I felt the safety of a child in doing it, accompanied by an unknown presence as I marched toward my last stop, beneath Devin’s window, counted the number of floors up to his room—four I think now—and waited for his light to flick on. A nurse nudging him, more likely Devin giving orders.

My orders were to get home, shower, and report for duty. The writing at the forefront was now relegated to the back. The shadow still at my side.

In a small town of Óbidos, Portugal, at the Capela di Osso hangs a plaque with a quote from Father António da Ascenção Teles, a parish priest in the village. He writes to hurried travelers, Pause….do not advance your travel, you have no greater concern, than this one: that on which you focus your sight. He concludes, The longer you pause, the further on your journey you will be.

Paradoxically, my Seattle walks were the pause that moved me through a frenetic day, an inexplicable life. They still are. I give thanks for the moment of time when after the fingers push and push to write, my soles quietly slap the sidewalk. Finally, my feet say, Let me have a turn. I’ll take it from here.

What does walking mean to you, I’m curious to know. As always, thanks for reading! If you’re not already subscribed, please consider doing so. This post is also public, so feel free to share!