My wife was kinda short and pudgy, with an egg-shaped face. She was cute as could be, gorgeous to me, but an uncommon combination of height, weight, and build. If she was walking toward me, I'd always know her from two blocks away, well before I could recognize her face.
And she must've had a distinctive walk, too. It's something I'd never noticed but blam, yesterday on a bus ride, I saw it out the window.
A short, pudgy woman was crossing the street, and then she walked south on California Avenue, and I watched with my mouth open. That woman's body shape was similar to Stephanie's, a little taller, but she had the same walk.
I'd never known that Stephanie had a specific walk. If you'd asked me, I'd've thought you were a kook. She walked like anyone else. There aren't that many ways to walk. Something must've been different about the mechanics of her footsteps, though, because jeez, there it was, yesterday out the window of a bus.
What's even weirder is that Stephanie was in a wheelchair for the last seven years of her life. And for a few years before that, she had an uncomfortable limp. And she's been dead for four years. So it's been about a dozen years since I've seen Stephanie's ordinary walk.
Ask me how Stephanie's walk was distinctive, and I couldn't possibly describe it, because I have no idea. All I know is, I saw someone walking her walk on California Avenue yesterday, and there was no mistaking it.
Watching that woman cross the street wasn't like seeing a ghost, but it took me vividly back in time, to the only woman I've ever loved, who had a walk like that woman on California Avenue.
So the old man staring out the bus's window with a tear running down his cheek? That was me.
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