Learning to Walk

         She started in the tiniest of movements, baby’s breath swaying in a fine spring, of a field where all was child’s play. The funny light in the sky, warm on her pale skin, the whispering blonde-fronds. The symphony of afternoon. On this clean, porcelain-footed portion of earth.

         Her steps were no surprise and had been building up for some time now, but her full-blown walk took her farther than Father had expected, and before he could stop her, she approached the edge: where the black dust met the grass and baby’s breath. Then, into the glass she bumped, to her surprise. She pressed her face to it – her little nose squishing against the glass. There she saw the outsiders, eating recalled bread, choking, coughing, and bashing against barricades, hundreds of people, pressed against woven spectra fiber, clamoring to get through. She fell onto her cotton diapered bottom as she stared at an almond woman with her tooth wedged between the weaves. The woman cried out as her tooth removed, hanging in the cross stitch. Then, the woman vanished into the crowd.  

         Father jogged over and picked up his new walker. His arms simulating safety; he did not look anymore. It served no purpose for him to look anymore. She didn’t understand it. Father understood it. Father served up platitudes as blankets for her discomfort. His words made no sense, but sounded nice and helped her store the almond woman away in a dark place that no one could see. The girl wouldn’t even see the almond woman, not until much later, when she really learned how to walk. None of it made sense to her then, and she wasn’t sure that walking was for her.

         It was three days before she even tried again. This time she didn’t go so far, just to the place where black dust met green grass and baby’s breath. She couldn’t understand the headlines, nor the aimless, quickly abandoned evacuation attempts, nor the ensuing redistribution of her toys and clothing, nor could she understand why her room became a home for so many of her future friends. Technicolor fade. Vibrant color readjusts her blood, progressively, after Father’s rage would bring her to a life-time of misunderstanding. She would hold onto a lot of things: resentment, self-pity, disjointed anger. We all do that.

         But learning to walk rarely ceases for very long, not once it’s begun, and sometimes, just sometimes, with great effort and readjustment of habitual mechanics, walking properly can be learned. So, she walked through her stored bits of sorrow and her sour memories of disgust and misplaced anger. She released the cultural aches of her genetic-past. That’s what she did: she learned to walk properly, even after Father was taken from her and her heart sang hate for nearly a lifetime. It was many years before she would really walk; it began with twinges of chronic pain in her hips, followed by grotesque swaths of emotion like cold water.

         She would never understand the grief in her walk, but it would trickle out, bit-by-bit, on quiet summer nights, with her arms stretched behind her head, legs akimbo, laughing at the stars with the almond woman and her children. Wars are won on quiet summer nights.