Walk, Don’t Run

Rather than let Lucy and Isaac park it in front of the TV for a few Disney Jr. offerings while I cook dinner, I’ve been taking the kids for a short walk with the dog as soon as we get home in the evening on weeknights.

Due to Ike’s need to shout “Door!” at every turn and to stomp on every water meter manhole cover in the sidewalk, it takes us 20 minutes or more to cover two small courts of townhouses. It’s not very aerobic, unless you’re 2 and you have really short legs, which Ike does. But for me, it’s definitely an exercise of sorts in letting my children have a very limited taste of freedom.

Lucy takes the lead and winds up nearly a block ahead at times, with the dog and me in the middle and Ike trailing closely behind. I find myself reaching in both directions at the same time, calling out to Lucy to slow down and stay where I can see her, while simultaneously urging Ike to keep up and come along. We live in a pretty quiet neighborhood so the risk of trouble of any stripe is minimal. And yet when I can’t physically reach them without taking several steps at a trot, well, I admit that it starts to make my heart pound a little bit.

Lucy will dash off to pick clover and dandelions out of someone’s front lawn while, yards away, Ike decides to do a tap dance on one of those green plastic rectangles covering the Verizon hub in someone’s yard. Meanwhile, nature will call to the dog and I need to stoop to make a hasty pick-up, eyes roving to the scampering girl and boy the whole time.

It makes my head spin to do even a little bit of letting go like this. Even though I’m away from the kids all day long when I’m at work, somehow these walks are different. They are fun, of course, but if I dwell on it, they can also start to feel like a preview of letting go for real, like when they get on a school bus someday bound for Jacksonville Elementary School and years later, to college and then an adult lives of their own.

So just as I can’t hold both of their hands on a walk because they tend to hit the ground running as soon as we’re out the door, I can’t hold onto them forever. For now, I plan to stuff down the worries about the growing-up days to come and make these slow walks to nowhere drag out for as long as possible.