I set out for my morning walk with purpose, because I need to soak up some Vitamin D and burn a few calories after last night’s minty cocktails and barbecue meatballs, and besides, I hear walks are supposed to be therapeutic, too. Along the way I encounter sidewalks full of leaves — the crunchy kind you can’t resist plowing through instead of walking around, going out of your way to crunch every leaf flat.

And I can’t help but flash back to when I was eight and had to walk to the café downtown after school to meet my dad so he could give me a ride home. Six whole blocks, bor-ing, and it took for-ev-er. But the crunchy leaves along the way served to ease the boredom, and I made sure to shuffle through and stomp on each and every one. Oh, get that one, too. And that one.

How could I have imagined back then that some thirty years later I’d go for these walks on purpose, and five times as long. And that I’d do it in this far-away place called Nashville, Tennessee, where my favorite girl singer, Sissy-Spacek-playing-Loretta-Lynn, sang at the Grand Ole Opry. And that I wouldn’t be on my way to meet my dad, get a quarter for the Ms. Pacman machine and maybe another for a Hershey bar, bug him to finish his coffee so we could go home already. That instead I’d be wishing I could have a cup of coffee with him, ask him how he’s doing.

Nope, I never could have imagined this.

But one thing hasn’t changed. The impulse to crunch those crunchable leaves. And that one. And that one, too.