Lunchtime Walks on Quarantine
Things have become very busy for me over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been given primary streaming and video responsibilities for our church during the lockdown, all the while ramping up for a new gig at my job, and working on an interesting side project as well — a product shoot for a friend at church who is opening up an Etsy store. (On a side note, I’ve never done anything like that and was honored that she even asked. I’m not 100% satisfied with the edits yet, and I could have done a better job on tamping down the glare in a few of the photos, but overall I’m happy with how they turned out. Even the glare, I think, provides the kind of natural look that she was going for in the shoot.)
The news seems mostly bad during lockdown, and the weather not much better. One of my quiet pleasures, one that has helped to keep me balanced, has been my daily walks. Sometimes one of the kids will tag along, and today I had both my boys with me. My little one held my hand most of the way. He’s seven now, bigger, so it touched me. I wonder sometimes when things like that happen whether they will be the last. There’s always a last time for everything that happens. When he got tired, I carried him on my back. We talked practically the whole time about his favorite toys. His little interests. He told me that if a vintage toy store carries Ninja Turtles, they’d always have a rack full of surplus April O’Neil toys that nobody wants to buy. He asked me what I wanted for Christmas. We speculated what a Star Wars movie would be like if all of the characters were Jabba the Hutts. Augie mostly kept silent. He does that a lot on our walks. Like me, he likes to meditate. I hope he enjoys the sun and air like I do.