“Well,” my wife Nora said, “I face planted on the sidewalk.”

She had limped up to the top of the stairs outside my office. Nose bleeding. Side of her face bleeding. Her left hand a mess. “My arm really hurts,” she said, holding it to her side with the good arm as I examined the overall carnage of her morning walk with the dog.

An eventful end to morning walk number 6,300, give or take, painfully clocking mile number 19,000, or thereabouts. Those are real numbers, every step.

She had her phone as always, a just-in-case precaution for situations just like this. She’d call if she needed help and I’d jump in the car and come running. Except if my phone was in the other room when she went down. Except if I was cutting myself shaving when she hit the sidewalk. Except if I didn’t hear the phone. Except if I wasn’t there to catch her.

Except for life.

Nora and I started walking together when our youngest child, our son Gaines, started driving himself to school. That was 24 years ago.

Conaway: In Memphis, there’s just something in the water

That reminds me a variation of the old joke about a son discussing his parents, “Mom and Dad starting walking three miles a day when I was 16. We have no idea where they are now.”

We walked Monday through Friday, a different route each morning through Central Gardens, each route three miles long. We saw every season. Every yard. Every house. Every huge oak, every new bloom. Every weathered board newly painted, every chimney newly tuck-pointed, and every one still waiting. We saw family rituals repeating, off to school, off to work, coffee on the porch. We returned waves from those porches, and from fellow walkers, and passing joggers and cyclists and honking cars. We met a lot of people and a lot of dogs. We made a lot of connections. We saw the beginning of each day, we saw the promise in that, the renewal in that.

We did this regardless of the weather. We learned about layering, and good shoes, and Gore-Tex, and hats. And we did it regardless of the weather in our lives as well.

We learned the value of this kind of shared time. We talked. Actually talked. And listened. No phone calls, one phone between us in a pocket for an emergency. No distractions, even out in the wide world we were side-by-side engaged with each other and in the life we were sharing, in the joys and sorrows and challenges.

Conaway: Data-driven benefits — for all — by the truckload

As all of the coaches of my youth would ask when something happened to any of us, “Can you walk it off, son?”

We did.

When my bookkeeper cooked the books, our fortunes began to melt and we had to sell our house, but our walks continued in our new High Point neighborhood. Monday through Friday. Five new three-mile routes. Different houses and huge oaks, the same sense of new days, of renewal. I had to close my business. I had to find something to do. We had to start again. All over again.

That was 14 years ago.

On one of our walks then, one dark and early November morning, Nora fell. It was, in fact, exactly where she fell a few days ago that began this column. We had been discussing our situation, and when she rose from the sidewalk there was determination behind the tears in her eyes.

Conaway: Battle of the terrible twos – the next generation

That very day, later that very morning, she started work across the street from that fall at the Trezevant retirement community. She began as the receptionist and 12 years later she retired as director of development and head of the Trezevant Foundation.

I’m incredibly proud of my wife, and I’m also aware that I didn’t pick her up from that fall or the fall the other day. We have literally and spiritually walked side-by-side, picking each other up from every fall, for a lifetime.

These days, I have some issues with uncooperative nerves and legs that keep me from those walks, but Nora gives me reports and I’m determined to get back out there.

As to this last fall, she’s going to be fine, but I may need some help making her wear the sling she’s been given.

And, of course, she made a connection. As she lay on the sidewalk, a woman walking by helped her up and walked her the two blocks home. They introduced themselves and Nora asked her if she was from Memphis.

“No,” she answered, “I’m from Selmer.”

Nora said that we had a friend from Selmer and said his name.

“He’s my first cousin,” the woman said.

I’m a Memphian, and it’s amazing what you can discover on a walk.