I walked three miles to mail a letter. Although it happened a couple of years ago, it was a memorable event. The letter was a birthday greeting to a friend who was turning ninety-one. I wanted to be sure she received it on time.
At the time, I was staying in Puerto Rico, and the post office, although minutes by car required a lengthy walk along a beach that would take me close to an hour. A hefty trek for such a small task.
I made my way along the beach– and with nothing else on my mind, I became aware that I was walking; simply putting one foot in front of the other. How many years of my life had I actually spent walking, I wondered? At seventy-eight, then, considering I’ve slept away a third of my life and spent possibly another third sitting around, walking was a prudent choice. As years mount, every step counts.
The sand was russet hued and course, like the beaches that I recall from my boyhood on Staten Island. My steps sunk into the sand making the walk laborious. Having to lift and place my feet so deliberately annoyed me at first. I wished for a harder surface, one easier to walk on.
Being barefoot I noticed how the sand yielded to my steps and although slowing me down, it warmly caressed each foot as it sank in, as if the earth were welcoming me, the way in ancient times our ancestors once received their guests by first washing their feet. It pleased me that the earth still welcomed me. Recently the earth’s inhabitants, myself included, have been trashing the planet, overwhelming her with plastics. Sea glass has become almost obsolete.
I found my toes regularly unearthing plastics of all kinds – bottles, bottle caps, toys, plates, knives bowls, forks and a Frisbee. I remember beach combing from my childhood. Then plastics were rare. On beaches then, the ocean washed up varieties of used and broken glass but the sand and sea transformed them, even beautifying the glass by fashioning new and lovely creations from what were old, useless castoffs. Plastics, seem deathless but lifeless, too, eternally young, resistant to time and transformation.
When she turned ninety, I remember my friend commenting on death. “When I’m no longer useful, I want to be out of here.” She added, “First, though, I want to go up in a hot air balloon.” She preferred ascending to walking.
Leaving the beach, I put on sandals, and walked a macadam road up a steep hill to the post office. I liked the firm certainty of the macadam underfoot but trudging up the hill I missed the intimacy my feet enjoyed with the beaches’ sandy ground: macadam’s efficiency displaced the sand’s hospitality and I wasn’t walking the earth, anymore. I was hitting the road.
I found the post office and gave the postmistress the letter. She spoke in Spanish. I understood enough to understand I just missed the pick up. My friend would get the letter a day late but I was sure that was time enough.
Returning, I saw two women on the beach; one elderly and the other I surmised was her daughter. The old woman – my contemporary, I wondered? I don’t reckon ages well any more. She was on a walker, intently negotiating the sandy beach and as she slowly placed each foot in the sand, her daughter stood apprehensively at her side watching each step. The daughter behaved like a mother, hovering and protective, and the mother like a child, lost in her own play, oblivious to all else.
The Evangelist John once wrote that when we’re young, we go where we want. When we’re old, someone else carries us where we don’t want to go.
The old woman wanted to walk the beach, I was sure of that; she seemed into it. She felt her toes in the sand, experienced the sensuality of being alive, the simple pleasures we never forget, like the caress of sand underfoot or watching a balloon rise in the air.
How much longer can she choose to place bare feet on the earth and have them welcomed and embraced, as they were on this day and when she was a little girl? I passed by her slowly, and in my heart, silently cheered, yes, yes.
Shall I, one day, be taken where I don’t want to go? I don’t want to go and sit in plastic and chrome chairs in rooms where the flooring is composed of synthetic compounds and smelling like disinfectant, floors hard and unyielding underfoot, preventing my toes from feeling the warm earth. I’ll leave no footprint behind on floors like this.
And should that be my lot, there will be no more long walks to post letters, anymore. I’ll have pick up and delivery to my room every day, from those who still remember who I am.
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
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Donald Berlin says
Thank you, Good friend! Although the sea may erase any footprint we humans may make, even with that knowledge, every one of us wants to leave a footprint. Nothing affirms our existence more than the awareness that we have left such a footprint on this earth. How amazing and sacred it is to be alive and to know it! What a Divine gift!