“He’s walking!” That was my wife on seeing the little boy up the block, toddling along next to his mother, one of her fingertips firmly in his grip. The last time we’d seen him, before the shutdown, he’d been in a stroller.
The occasion was an informal neighborhood promenade. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, my wife had sent an email to everyone in the neighborhood inviting them to take a walk around the block or sit out on their front lawn between 6:30 and 7:30pm last night so that we could all see and chat with each other while maintaining a “social distance.”
Around 50 people came out, which seemed like enough to declare the event a success.
A couple across the street from us was out with their college-age offspring. “You know things are boring at our house,” their mother told us, “when our kids will come out for something like this.”
Not only were we able to catch up with people we hadn’t seen in months, we talked with people we hadn’t met before, including a family who had just moved into the neighborhood.
It took us more than an hour to get around the block, and some of our neighbors were still making their way around when we got home.
Someone suggested we do it again next month, or even next week. “What else is there to do?” they said.