Walking With Me
She doesn’t like to walk with me, never has. Early on, she would trail far behind, and I would forget to wait for her. I’d end up way ahead; sometimes, I thought I’d lost her.
Once, a man passed me on the sidewalk and asked, “Is that your child?”
I looked back and saw her yards away. “Yes,” I said.
“I couldn’t tell,” the man said. “You were so far from her.”
For a while, what occupied her was pay telephones. I’d look back and see her pretending to drop a coin, dial a number and make a call. “What are you doing?” I would ask.
“I’m calling Randi,” she would say, and I would understand she missed her mother.
These days, she stops for more athletic reasons. On one of our recent foot trips, I looked back and saw her falling off a handrail. She’d apparently climbed onto the horizontal bar and lost her balance. She landed on her feet, however.
“Walk with me,” I said, but I knew she wouldn’t.
“Are you with me?” I asked, but I expected no answer.
- Thaddeus Rutkowski
