Who’s Giving the Orders?

With the exception of a few years in my seventies when arthritis limited my ability to git up and go on my own, I have always been committed to a morning walk. As a Taurus, I have also been committed to the same one-mile walking route day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, for the past nine years we’ve lived in this neighborhood. If you ask my wife, Pretty, my resistance to change is not always a virtue. Please don’t discuss it with her. I’m begging you.

Last week a woman who looks to be about my age, a woman who lives in a house along my regular route was outside in her front yard putting an envelope in her mailbox. I had seen her a few times, and we always waved to each other but had never spoken. She stopped this particular day to have a word with me.

“Hello,” she said. “I’ve seen you walk past our house every day for many years.”

“Yes,” I said. “Your house is at the top of a hill that’s hard for me to pull so I usually stop here to catch my breath.”

“I’ve always wanted to ask you if you’re following orders?” she asked.

“Following orders? I’m not sure what you mean,” I replied.

“I’m talking about doctors’ orders. Is there a doctor who’s making you walk every day?”

“Oh, no one’s making me walk,” I said and smiled. “I just do it for myself.”

She nodded, turned to walk back to her house, and said with a friendly wave, “I’m going to my sofa and watch tv, but you keep going.”

I laughed, and kept going.

Upon reflection I remember a doctor who did suggest walking would be good for me when I was thirty years old and had developed high blood pressure. That was several lifetimes ago – so long ago I can’t remember if that’s the original doctor’s orders which inspired my daily walks for the past fifty years or whether I connect my walks now with the memories of those long walks with my daddy at our hundred acres of pastures and piney woods just past the Grimes County/Montgomery County line in rural southeast Texas.

My daddy loved a long walk, too. We had the best talks when we were together in that place. Sometimes I see him and hear him as I walk through the neighborhood I call home in South Carolina today. No orders necessary.