Learning to walk

Hello Everyone,

Learning to walk is the most impressive human physical feat.

I say this as someone who loves sports documentaries, sport-inspired movies and sport-show highlight reels. Free Solo, Senna, The Last Dance, they were candy. I could watch hours of McDavid scoring ridiculous goals. But, watching the munchkin teeter around on her short little legs, moving uncertainly from one piece of furniture to my pant leg and on to the next piece of furniture with all the grace and speed of a land-bound penguin, that tops them all.

It doesn't matter that pretty much every human being learns to walk (and those who do not very often learn feats just as impressive) while you can count on one hand the number of people who can climb like Alex Hannold or score like Jordan and McDavid (and have fingers left over). It's where you start from that makes it impressive. Being very good at hockey, then training really hard and becoming the best at hockey is one thing. But starting from absolutely nothing and learning to walk within a year is mind boggling.

It’s hard to even conceive of how far away a newborn is from walking. No strength, no coordination, no sense of balance, no memory of the movement. Absolute zero. Even people who suffer brain injuries and have to learn to walk again have some sense of what it's supposed to feel like. Toddlers have none of that. What they do have is a body that is top heavy and ill-suited to walking, but is also undergoing huge changes. Between the time they start to totter to when they can walk they might grow 25% or more. It's wild.

In most cases, and this includes the munchkin, they already have a perfectly good way of getting around. She could crawl like a demon before she learned to walk. And yet, over and over again, she pulled herself up, using whatever furniture, human or pet is handy, and tiny step by tiny wavering step, learns to ambulate.

Wes

Photos

Some of the first flowers of the spring.