Have you ever heard the song by Chicago Saturday in the Park? It is truly a great tune. It plays in my mind whenever I go to or drive by a park. I bet it started to play in your head as you read the first line of this text ( if you have ever heard it)
Going to the park for my 4k walk has been a
real joy for the past 10 years. Ever since I was struck with the
they-have-not-figured-it-out disease that I have, walking among the trees,
birds and plants has been bliss. In the beginning I used to go almost every
day. I started off with 1k, then 2k and finally 4k in an hour. ( Before the
so-called disease, I was doing 6k)
Work and work and family issues in 2019 made me
cut back on the days that I was able to go for that walk and breath of somewhat
fresh air ( living in a polluted city does not help, but with the trees I can
say that it is somewhat fresh) perhaps I wen ten times the whole year. I could
also feel that my legs were hurting more, and my health was not as good as
before.
2020- bang! Pandemic. Stay home. Going out for
walks is good for you. I was thrilled. I would be able to go to the park for my
daily walk and still work from home. But no! That did not happen. Parks closed.
It just so happened that the number of people going to the parks tripled. Guess
that people had the same idea as I did. The alternative would be to walk in
place at home or walk around the apartment. No illusions here. It worked for
the first two weeks. It is just so very boring despite being a necessity.
July 13, 2020 the day before I turned 54 ( the international
Day of Rock) , the parks reopened. I was thrilled but scared at the same time.
How was I going to leave my house for a walk in the park? I spoke to a friend
and he said he would join me in the new adventure. We decided to go towards the
end of the week so that the eager people could go in the beginning and this way
we could guarantee that it would be emptier.
Leaving the house is never an easy task while
the coronavirus is out there hunting its next victim. Wearing a mask is not
easy either when you wear glasses, they tend to fog up after a few minutes.
Nonetheless, I needed to overcome this challenge and go. I wore my most
comfortable mask and went. On arrival, there was a guard at the only gate open
(this park has 5 gates) to control the number of people. Another man taking
people´s temperatures. And yet, still another man working the hand sanitizer
gadget. I passed all the tests and met up with my friend who was waiting at the
assigned location.
Being out of shape, we walked for an hour and
only walked 3k. After the first kilometer, I had to remove my glasses due to
the steam that was fogging them up. The part of the song Saturday in the
Park that goes: People talking, really smiling / A man playing guitar/
Singing for us all did not happen. There was no man playing guitar. People were
just walking or running. They were talking from a distance and you couldn´t
tell whether or not they were really smiling due to the masks. However, you can
tell if the person is smiling through the eyes. But with foggy glasses this is
sometimes hard to see.
After having walked in the park, a feeling of
accomplishment tingled my body. Being that I was outdoors, I decided to do my
weekly shopping and drugstore run. It was a bitter-sweet feeling. It seems that
this has been the best expression that I have used often during all this time
of this physical distancing: BITTER – SWEET , to describe what has been going
on inside of me.
To be honest, I can´t wait for this part of the
song to happen again: People reaching, people touching/A real celebration/Waiting
for us all. Then I can really sing the song. I ´ve been waiting such a long time,
as the song goes, for Saturday. Parks are still closed on the weekend, though.
If you haven´t heard the song, do so and pay
attention to the lyrics. 😊
Written: July 23, 2020
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| Photo: Meire Marion |
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