Facebook handed me these photographs this morning from September 28, 2024.
At first glance, they’re nothing extraordinary. Brian and I went to the orchard, stood among the flowers, posed with the enormous butterfly wings and behind the giant IOWA letters, and somebody took our picture. It was one of those beautiful Iowa fall days that feels worth remembering, although at the time I couldn’t possibly have known what I would eventually remember about it.
I look at these pictures now and notice something I never would have noticed then. I’m standing.
Not carefully positioned after transferring from a wheelchair. Not wondering whether the path ahead is packed dirt, gravel, grass, mud, or something my wheels won’t navigate. I’m not calculating how many steps I have left in me or looking around for somewhere to sit. There is no cane leaning against the sign and no wheelchair waiting just outside the photograph. We simply went to the orchard.
Last year, when we took the girls, the wheelchair came with us. This year, if we go again, there isn’t really a question about it. The wheelchair will be mandatory.
That could make these photographs feel sad. Strangely, they don’t. They feel like witnesses.
They remind me that there was a time when walking through an orchard was easy enough that I didn’t consider walking through an orchard an accomplishment. I didn’t know to appreciate the uncomplicated act of getting out of the car and wandering wherever something interesting caught my eye. And I’m glad I didn’t.
We aren’t supposed to live every ordinary day thinking, Someday I may not be able to do this. That would be an exhausting way to be alive.
Sometimes the photograph has to hold the appreciation for us until we’re ready to understand what was actually inside it.
Two years later, life requires more planning. My world includes canes and wheels and accessible paths and knowing when my body has reached its limit. It also includes a little puddle outside my house that has somehow introduced me to green herons, mourning doves, rabbits, cardinals, frogs, changing seasons, ridiculous adventures, and hundreds of ordinary moments I probably would have walked right past once.
Maybe that is the strange bargain life sometimes makes with us. I could move through more of the world then. I notice more of it now. These photographs were taken before the puddle. I just didn’t know there would ever be a puddle to measure time against.
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