Counting The Footsteps

Today my husband reminded me of something that I'm carrying along almost all my life, more or less, unconsciously.

We were out, and we picked a few things in the grocery store on the way home. Entering the house, in the entrance hall, I first took off my shoes and jacket. On the way, I left my handbag on my office table and proceeded to the kitchen.

Some of the things we bought I put in the refrigerator and the rest in the small pantry attached to the kitchen. Then I put my coffee into the microwave and took remained hygiene supplies to store it into the cabinets in the bathroom and small storage room across it.

When I returned into the kitchen, I found my husband standing there and staring into the microwave. Heard me approaching, he said, "When the hack, you managed even to warm up your coffee too???"

As I didn't expect that question, I stopped for a while with question marks in my eyes, not knowing what to tell him. So, he continued, "I mean, I still have my shoes on, and you already stored all we bought, and your coffee is warmed up and ready to drink."

Well, when we entered the house, he first went to his study to left something there. Then he returned to the entrance hall to take off his jacket. After that, he went back to his study (I don't know why) when I heard him talking about how he needs to return to the entrance hall again as he left his mobile phone in the jacket.

What was he doing after that, until I found him in front of the microwave, I don't know, as I was already in the bathroom. But that's not what was bothering me. I was thinking about why I'm doing these things that way, in some sort of lined up order. And then the real answer hit me just like that, so I finally answered my husband the following.

Well, you know, I'm just counting the footsteps!
He threw that look on me like I'm crazy, so I continued to explain.

When I was a little girl, maybe ten years old or so, I found my grandma numerous times standing in the kitchen in front of the pantry's closed door. Hundreds of times before that, one day, I didn't pay to much attention to it. But that, one day I decided finally to aks her why she is standing there like that.

I recall how she was leaning with one hand on the table and with the other on kitchen cabinets that were standing right across. I still have that picture in my mind as the moment engraved in my memory forever. The answer she gave me was more or less the same one I just told my husband. She told me, "Honey, I'm just counting my footsteps!"

I didn't have a single clue what she was talking about, and probably I was staring at her the same way my husband was looking at me, thinking about how she must be crazy. She caught that bewildered look of mine and explained it to me.

"You see," my Granny told me, "I'm standing here and thinking what all I need from that pantry, so when I get there, I would pick all at once and wouldn't need to return twice or even thrice just because I forgot something."

"I know you can't understand that now," my Granny continued, "because you are young and healthy, but in my age" (she was over 80 at the time), "with the leg pain I have, I have to count every step."

My Grandma suffered from rheumatism and osteoarthritis, and I knew how sometimes her knees were so painful to her that she would hardly walk. Although, after that day, finding her standing in front of the pantry's door would still be somewhat funny to me, I never asked her again about it.
Instead, whenever I would find her like that, I would ask her to tell me what does she need so I'll bring her.

Many years later, and although still quite young and healthy, I found myself buzzing around, left and right, back and forth, like some crazy bumblebee or fly, without any order or sense. The picture of my Granny standing in the kitchen in front of the closed pantry's door popped up in my head. I asked myself why I should wait to be old with painful legs or something, and why I shouldn't start using and practicing my Granny's trick right away, so I'll be quite skilled when the time comes.

And that's how my "counting the footsteps" started.

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