Appreciate it!

These days when I see someone hurrying in to the post office I stoop harder over the rollator and bite my tongue not to call after them -- "Do you appreciate the fact that you're walking?  Be sure to realize that you can walk!"
   It seems such a counter-intuitive thing -- all that height, that weight, that muscle, balanced on two small feet.  Yet babies pull themselves up almost automatically -- and what a triumphant look the first time they achieve it! 
   You can see by the spots on the knees and the toes of those white shoes that up until then he'd been crawling -- this was in my in-law's living-room in Montreal.  Fine moment.  


So anyhow -- my other son showed me how to access those DOS journals I kept on floppy disks after 1983 ('moved the typewriter off the desk today')  and I am delighted to find this entry in July of 1990:

Sometimes when I'm walking I am very conscious of the fact that I'm walking.  I can walk!  If I can't in the future, I'll never have to say "I should have appreciated it while I could..." because I do appreciate it.