Comfortable in my favorite chair, I looked at my walking shoes neglected in the corner and sighed. I’d picked them out with my grandson at the REI where he works. “A quick errand,” Luka said. But those pretty brown eyes my daughter gave him couldn’t hide the fact that he was up to something.
Inside, the place was magical. Any doohickey you’d want or need for an adventure felt like it was there. All the while, Luka hovered, grinning, ready to tell me how anything worked. I made him wait, though. That is, until we got to that great big wall thing in the middle. An enormous stone one that rose high over the whole place and escaped through the ceiling out into the sky.
“The different color grips map the difficulty. Red’s hardest,” Luka said, “so beginner to expert climbers can all try.” Remarkable.
Afterwards, we went behind it and that’s where he showed me my gift. “You’ll love these, gran. They’re Nike Free’s,” he exclaimed while his salesgirl friend eased them on. I just smiled and enjoyed the pampering as she talked about something called pronation.
He held out his arm to help me up, though I didn’t really need it, and I walked to the mirror. I liked that Luka remembered my favorite color was green. “They are like a glove!” I beamed, not wanting to disappoint him.
“Didn’t I tell you!?”
She boxed them up and, from the store to my driveway, Luka described every walking path near my house. And there they’ve sat ever since, dusty and unused.
But today those young women climbing to the top of that stone wall came to mind and I lifted up off the chair. Bones popping and muscles groaning, I put the shoes on again. Thinking of my wonderful grandson, I opened the door and when I reached the sidewalk, the afternoon sun warmed my cheeks and brought out a smile that caught me by surprise. I took a few more steps. Not as hard as I thought. Then a few more, and my smile got even bigger.
The memory of the wall came back but now I saw my younger self, resting a moment at the top between the roof and the unknown above, looking down at me and waving, then grabbing the red grip above her and disappearing into the clouds.