Desire to walk. Dread the treadmill. Watch the sun set.
I love where I live but it's best not to walk around here after dark. So I went back to my childhood neighborhood, where my brother's family and my parents still live, and had a vigorous, glorious walk.
It's such a great neighborhood, right in the heart of town. You can walk after dark without fear -- I saw many other people out jogging or walking their dogs, even at 8:30 p.m. It has the most wonderful sounds, even bagpipes in the summer because the local corps practices outdoors nearby. There are churches and stores and green space nearby. The houses have character and history. I don't know why anyone would want to build some McMansion in the sticks. But I digress.
My parents have lived in the same house for 30+ years, and I still identify the houses by the owners they had in the 1970s. On my route tonight I walked past so many houses that I had actually been in -- I know their floor plan and have a mental picture of how they looked, at least 30something years ago.
I love the house I grew up in but I always got a thrill out of seeing the other houses on the street. I liked seeing how their layout was different from ours. Some of our neighbors had dogs, and that was a big deal. Everybody's house smelled different than ours. Why was in those houses? Because I went to play with my friends, or we got invited over for dinner, or the neighbors were having a party, or my mom took a cake, or our parents were visiting.
I now live in a condo, about 25 paces away from the front door of my nearest neighbor, and we've never been inside each other's houses. That's what I was thinking about during my walk tonight.
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