The Up Side

Our 2 months without a driver's license were not exactly what you might imagine.  Although we could not drive, we could use taxis or have a driver drive our vehicle, neither of which are particularly convenient, considering carseats, schedules, and so on.  But it was an option, at least. We never really left our small town in those two months.  Shopping or dining in a different city was out of the question.  We went where we really needed to go, and the rest of the time we stayed home.  Most of the time, we made use of our own two feet.  We covered a lot of ground.  For the majority of the time, I walked the kids too and from school.  It's a 5 minute drive, but with kids, a stroller and hills, it's about a 40 minute walk. 

But you know what?  We had a LOT of time to talk.  We counted animals.  We made dinner menus.    We had little races to "the next telephone pole."  We talked about the school day.  We found familiar faces to smile at every day.  We went on bear hunts.  (We sometimes stopped for icecream on the way home!) We noticed things we had never noticed before while going the same route in a car.  For me, at least, it was a blessing in disguise.  It was hard to notice it at the time, but looking back I miss that time.  Sure, it was hard to get anything else done when I spent so much time walking the town.  Dinner was always late.  I don't miss walking to the grocery store.  But those minutes, those uninterrupted minutes gave us wonderful time together.  As a bonus, the long walk home meant by the time we arrived, we had walked, run and danced all our ya-yas out. 

I'm not sure why, but it doesn't seem possible to find those minutes to just talk and just be together now that we are driving again.  I miss it, and M must too, because yesterday she asked me if we could walk to school today.  And maybe we will.  But at least it's a choice we can make.