Date walks

Even before the pandemic, Mary had been getting bored with her custom of running the three miles around the lake every day. I can't imagine why. As the pandemic progressed and I got to know the various trails around Chapel Hill better, it occurred to me that she and I should really go on a "date walk" both to get quality time together and to expand her horizons. For a long time she resisted, saying that she was too busy sitting with her laptop in her command post in the living room, that she needed to "get things done."

Then we tried it once, then twice, and now she is more or less hooked. Yesterday I took her over into Cedar Falls Park, then down into the surprising gorge that runs along the east side of Kenmore along Cedar Fork Creek. Then we walked up to East (Chapel Hill High School), where I showed her the two ponds back there behind the school, then made our way home via the Dry Creek Trail and the cut through from Weaver Dairy to Sedgefield.

There have been times when we have gone walking or running when we have talked less than perhaps would be expected, when maybe our conversations weren't as good as might be hoped. There are many hard things about being married, amongst them the tensions between egos and balancing out goals that aren't always perfectly aligned, but also just the fact that spouses spend an awful lot of time together.* As we approach empty-nesterdom, or something vaguely resembling it, it's something we need to work on. Yesterday was a good instance.

*My officemate David said recently that a friend of his -- a woman -- said that she had married her husband "for better or for worse... but not for lunch." There is a lot of wisdom in that.