WF
MY TURN
205 Miles
How daily walks helped my son and me connect during COVID-19
imagination during the lockdown, or maybe he
just shared it with us more. He talked about
needing dinosaur DNA to build an improved
Jurassic Park and vividly described games the
kids used to play on the playground. “On our
walk, can we fight Hydra?” he’d ask.

While we were mostly sequestered in our
condo during lockdown, these walks helped us
feel more connected to our neighbors. In the
beginning, the streets were fairly empty. Then
we started to see some regulars, and by spring
this year, we were nodding to them as we
passed rather than crossing the street to add
distance. We could feel our anxiety lessening.

We found teddy bears in our neighbors’ win-
dows on treasure hunts and later the many
Biden signs. The rainbow flags came out in June.

We admired or collected things put out on the
curb and books from the Little Free Libraries.

I hadn’t remembered noticing as much around
our neighborhood as I did on our walks.

Halloween was the most exciting time to
explore. The invention of distanced candy dis-
tribution amused us. We felt like a team as we
looked for new decorations every day. Our
favorite was a pair of googly eyes affixed to a
window on 40th Place.

Overall, the walks were a bright spot in
our days. But sometimes someone had to pee
or we argued or someone tripped. Once we
walked past my son’s school at pickup — we
choose to stay virtual when in-person learn-
ing started again — and saw his friends, now
taller. He stood there holding my hand, naming
who he could recognize. We returned home in
silence that day.

My son and I probably needed more daily
exercise and fresh air than 1 mile up and down
some hills, but at least we had that. We got out
of our two-bedroom condo with one child in
virtual school and two adults working from
At first it was a slog, partly because of nature’s home. During our walks, I didn’t have to nudge
uring the pandemic school year of
2020, my son and I walked a mile most intensities. “It’s too hot,” he’d accurately whine. him to log into school or put on his shoes. We
weekdays, up the hill to his elementary But we started to appreciate how the seasons were simply together, and I could listen to who
school and around the campus before head- added surprises. In the winter, he invented he was and his dreams. T
ing home for virtual learning. Over the course “boot skating” on the flooded, frozen baseball
Chloe Yelena Miller is a writer and writing
of 205 miles, wearing face masks and carry- field. In the spring, we counted cicadas until he teacher living in Washington, D.C., with her fam-
ing hand sanitizer, we learned more about our decided there were “just too many!”
ily. Find her online at chloeyelenamiller.com and @
My second grader lived more deeply in his chloeymiller on Twitter.

Glover Park neighborhood and each other.

D 30 Washington FAMILY SEPTEMBER 2021
CHLOE YELENA MILLER
BY CHLOE YELENA MILLER



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