I’m just back from a walk. I didn’t quite make it to 10,000 steps before the rain. Yesterday, thanks to two separate walks with my friends Natalie and Shirley, I managed to log 15,000 steps. I must admit, though, that when I am driving, my IPhone interprets some bumps in the road as steps. I suppose one could think of that metaphorically, the bumps in the road, helping us to meet our goals.
Saturday I walked just 5000 steps, on my usual shorter walk out this road and back. I had decided I would take a stoll with my grandmother Gertie, Mom’s mother, who died when I was barely six. I have many fond memories of her. She makes a fine companion on the road.
We, she and I, were chatting about long walks in retirement, and she reminded me how neither she nor my mother managed to reach the age that I have achieved. My mother didn’t walk far in the years before her death at 62, thanks to her dreadful arthritis. I don’t recall seeing Grammie going for a walk either, but then my entire memory of her is kitchen centered, either in her own kitchen or the kitchens of relatives nearby. There were lots of those, almost like a family compound up and down her road, sort of like what I enjoy here on my own road.
So Grammie reminded me, Saturday, of how HER mother, Ada May, loved to walk. She would even stop along the way and rank up other people’s firewood. I often think of her when I am stacking wood. But Saturday I was thinking of walks and stops as a pleasant retirement activity. I thought of who I could visit along the way, stopping for a rest and a cup of tea. That was the moment I decided to intentionally change my walking patterns.
Today I walked to the corner store, almost 3.5 km away, and mostly downhill. I stopped there for a coffee, before heading back up the hills toward home. The only visit today was with my brother in the barn yard, in the rain. Tuesday I visited my mother’s friend. She was sitting on her front step in the sun. In the days to come, I plan to visit other neighbours. I’m practising for retirement.
But today I was also listening to an audiobook, My Grandmother’s Hands, a book about how our bodies hold the trauma of our ancestors, and how that embodied trauma effects our relationships today. Until we heal our own trauma, in our own white bodies, Resmaa Menakem writes, we can’t expect to grow beyond the racial divide.
And so, I was walking with my ancestors, wondering how their traumas affect my worldview. It’s not just the recent trauma of recent ancestors. The trauma of our ancient European ancestors is encoded in our bones, in our DNA, in our bodily heritage. The terror of marauding bands or crusading armies, even the early expansion of Christian empire, all of these things sit heavy in my heart and my belly.
So I take my body for a walk, and think of the history that I know so little about, and my place within the current ecosystem of our society and economy. If you see me walking alone, I am never really alone. Guaranteed.
Dream Bringer’s Studio 