There’s only one rule on a day when the weather hits 65 degrees: whatever work is on my to-do list, I must go for a walk with Nicholas.
We left home an hour before Julianna’s bus was due, headed west around the circle and up the punishing hill to the main drag—my usual 20-minute exercise route. My mind flitted around the slalom course of projects I’m trying to juggle in the next few days. But the cool air and the sunshine lulled my brain. Nicholas’s, too, apparently. Halfway up the third hill, he leaned back against the stroller seat and put his hands behind his head. I know that pose. It’s a half-step from sleep, and I couldn’t have that. I needed him to take a nap at the same time as Julianna.
“Nicholas, do you want to walk?” I asked.
“Mm!” he said.
I knew I was sacrificing the exercise portion of the remainder of the walk, but so it goes. I set him on the ground, and he circled behind the stroller and put his chubby hands into pushing. And then quit. Because after all, there was so much to see and point at. Car! he signed. Car! Truck! Car!
It soon became clear that this excursion was destined to take far longer than I had anticipated. Every clump of spotty snow left from the freak storm on Monday, every downspout noisy with runoff must be examined. He was just sure every fence had a dog behind it. He had to stop walking altogether every time a vehicle backed out of a driveway, in silent worshipful tribute to Things That Go. It took some convincing, but at last I got him to crouch down and touch the snow lingering in the shadow of a privacy fence. He watched his fingers sink into the pack, watched me crush it in my palm, and knocked it out of my hand.
And oh, then at last we saw a dog. A gorgeous white Husky, standing with its owner in a yard half a mile from home. I had to restrain him from running over to it.
Somewhere amid this, my mind slowed down. I saw—really stopped to absorb—the blueness of the sky, the bright yellow of the first leaves on a towering weeping willow, the first daffodil and crocus blooms. And the reality of my little boy growing up. I watched him tromp up a driveway and then turn and look back at me, crouching to put his hands on his knees and give me the Mischief Grin. Words came back to me, words I wrote about Nicholas’s big brother when he was just about this age: You’re a miniature Columbus, exploring your new world, and you fill my heart, till it nearly bursts with joy.
I guess it will never stop amazing me, the way my boys tune into the celestial radio waves and just learn things, without being taught, without trying, as natural as breathing or falling asleep, as inevitable as the sunrise following the dawn.
Into my reverie came the niggling thought that I needed to check the time, that it must be getting close to noon. I stopped wearing a watch my sophomore year of college, and I learned a good time sense because of it. But with Julianna’s bus due about 12:15, I had to be certain. So I pulled out my cell phone. 12:06.
And with that, Nicholas’s explorations came to an end. I put him back in the stroller and hurried the block and a half back home. We made it about four minutes before the bus pulled up.
As difficult a time as I’ve been having with Nicholas lately, that walk now enters my memory as a much-needed high point. Thank God for the beautiful moments. Without them, how could we get through the rest?
Kathleen M. Basi 