Why walk?

Ever since Rachel, my daughter, introduced me to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela it fired my wonder and grew in my heart. 

 I think of my life as heretofore having two parts, growing up, and the life of the family.

Part One

 I was born and raised in Battle Creek, Michigan in a home like so many others . . .safe, secure, parents who loved me, friends, school, and church.  I was a normal kid, a bit more, or more than a bit, self-centered than most, but worried like my peers about friends, popularity, and pimples.  It was the 60's and all that implied for being young.  I went off to school at Kent State, there met my wife, Ketl.

Part Two

Together, Ketl and I started part two: the life of the family.  I dearly love and cherish all --my wife, my daughter's-how could a man be so blessed?-my church, my wife's Jewishness.  We've truly had riches beyond measure.  I have a good job that is intellectually stimulating and is full of wonderful colleagues.  

But now, part three is opening before me.  I still have my wife, and look forward to many more years of companionship and love with her.  My daughter's are grown.  It is my role as a father has changed significantly.  My daughter's don't need someone to coach field hockey or pick them up after school or wait up for them to return from a date.  What will part three bring?  In part I walk to ask that question and  to seek an answer.  What is next?

This week news of a death gave my walk a new urgency and poignancy.  A friend from my days in Battle Creek died suddenly out in California.  Keric Rowlee and I went to elementary school together.  In junior high we were often constant companions.  We rode bikes.  We sailed like pirates on Goguac lake.  We endlessly discussed the mystery that girls added to the world. The night Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, Keric and I watched in excitement and wonder and then wandered into the warm summer night and gazed at the moon.  In high school, we double dated to senior prom, inflicting our cooking-- flaming shish ka bobs--on our dates.   Keric and I did things the details of which we'll never tell our kids . . ..  Like so much in this life, we drifted apart after high school.  I lost touch with him until a very few years ago.  I found him, via the web, out in California. He had adventured far and wide across the globe I think, but now was settled with a business and family.  We didn't strike up much more than an electronic Face Book nod to each other, yet the news that he died suddenly, leaving a wife and daughter and friends hit me hard.  I was going to walk to Santiago before I heard of the sudden death of an old friend.  Now, I will walk to Santiago because I can and he can't; because God sustains my legs and my heart and I have a question or two about why my friend is no longer sustained with those simple yet "it means everything" graces.  I walk because I wonder what's next . . .not just for me in Part Three, but for those I love, whose lives have brought me to this day. Ever since Rachel, my daughter, introduced me to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela it  fired my wonder and grew in my heart and continues to inflame my wonder to this day.