Nearly every day for the past five years I have walked around my block. I leash my dogs, Sasha and Ross, and I take off around my neighborhood. I have gotten to know a few people along the route, but for the most part my walk is a solitary thing.
I think of the older couple with the two beautiful golden retrievers. They planted a new lawn in the front last year. I always imagine that their dogs are going to come right through the window and start a fight with my dogs. I pass the house where Jennifer grew up. The neighbors with the pond in their back yard always offer me a cold beer. (Would drinking a beer sort of ruin all the benefits of walking? I've always wondered.) Their next door neighbor gave me two Chicago-style sausages and told me the best way to barbeque them. There is the man who filled my walker basket with peaches fresh off the tree. Finally there is the family who has the German shepherd who broke his leash in order to come greet my dogs.
But most days the walk is quiet, and I rarely talk to anyone except my two pups. Today though a man limped out of his house and asked me where I had been. I told him I had been too sore to walk for the last week or so. He told me about how his back was injured, and how he understood that it hurt me to walk. He gave me a bottle of water, and we talked about how to live life in spite of pain. (Like I know.) He and his wife watch me walk by every day, and they miss me when I'm not there.
It's really nice to be missed.
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