March 30, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

The old cigarette advertisement proclaimed “I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel,” but really those of us fortunate to move our feet go much farther every day in search of whatever we want, or need or must do. We particularly hike stairways.

When we are young, we might skip them altogether in favor of sliding down a bannister. Or we might leap the stairs, so agile youth is and seemingly always in a hurry. Perhaps too much of a hurry to grow up, only to be wistful in older age for that time.

In young adulthood, we can still scurry up and leap stairs, but with a more serious view ahead in life – the view at the top of the stairs – and we are more measured in our pace.

Press forward a bit into our thirties, and some of us are carefully watching where we step, perhaps holding an infant or avoiding the affectionate pet that follows us around. Soon enough, the infant is taking first steps on the steps. One day that, the next coming down to leave the nest.

As we age but more so as our parents do, we help them up and down the staircase. The slowness of that exercise gives pause to our lives, their lives, memories.

Finally, we are our parents, and maybe the very steps we ran up at 10 we now take one at a time, a second handrail added to the opposite wall for safety.

But life is that, right? Climbing steps, and coming down?

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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