One Misstep

One misstep and our summer changes. No more two-mile walks together through town as the stars come out and the lights blink on. No more working together in what we planned would be our best garden ever. No more biking or swimming or disc golf.

Instead, my husband straps an iWalk to his leg or props it on a knee scooter to go everywhere his two feet used to take him. Life changed so quickly. So easily. Without warning.

“It’s a Jones fracture,” his doctor said. “Absolutely no weight on that foot. Not once.”

Doors open to a perfect June evening, but we sit morose.  The breezes and the bird calls tantalize us. Just one walk. That’s all we want. Just one walk down the street and through the park and over the creek. Just a chance to wander through streets where children play hopscotch and zip by on bikes, where we can stop for ice cream and meander back home past the courthouse and down the sidewalk to our front door.

“We’ve got to get hold of this,” my husband says. “Find a way to redeem the summer.”

But we’re stuck. Until we think of a recent vacation to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where we took a GPS-guided audio tour through copper country. It was as if an expert sat in the back seat of our car interpreting what we saw.

“You think they’ve got something for the middle of Ohio?” my husband asks.

We’ve got no mines here, no mountains, and no water to speak of. But does Ohio have stories?

We do!

So we install an audio tour app. And off we go, Steve hobbling to the car on his iWalk. Our first tour takes us to the Grimes Flying Laboratory, where we learn that Warren Grimes is known as the father of aircraft lighting.

“Think of the lights you see on aircraft wing tips,” our guide says. “Grimes invented those to make flying at night safer.”

The laboratory is accessible with an iWalk. Inside, we see a 1940s airplane being restored. And we read about Warren Grimes, a runaway orphan, who ended up working for Ford Motor Company and taught himself engineering. And whose red, green, and white navigation lights are found on the wingtips and tails of almost every plane in the world.

Well, this will change the way I look out at my next airplane wing, the way I’ll watch the next plane fly at night in the sky above our deck.

And to think, a runaway orphan boy, someone given a bad deal in life, did all that!

On the trip home, we’re pleasantly drowsy.

“Let’s take a small nap,” Steve says.

Just ahead is a shaded graveyard. Steve pulls in. We open our windows and recline our seats. The birds sing, the breeze wafts, and we sleep with the rest of them.