April 01st, 2020

I'm sure I've mentioned it umptyump times already but nearly every work day, around noon, Tim takes a walk.  Partly to step away from his work for a short while, partly for the exercise and partly just to get out into the fresh air and sunshine.  It does a body good.  When I'm home, I walk with him.  Lately, I'm always home.  

We have come to refer to it as the noonwalk (not moon walk) because it generally happens around that time-ish.  It's not like a bell rings and ..uhoh...drop everything and head out the door.  It's whenever he gets to a break point in his work.  

We usually walk the same route.  A big circle South, then West, then North, then east back to our house.  It's a little less than 3 miles so it's a really decent walk.  And one long stretch of it (Just shy of a mile) is along the water.  That part of it is a road named, The Esplanade.

Recently, we no sooner arrived at The Esplanade when we saw that someone had chalked the above inspirational message.  How nice, I thought, that someone thought to do that.  In these days when we cannot touch, cannot be near one another, cannot be in groups, cannot go visiting and nearly everything we would normally be doing has either been shut down or knocked sideways, it just felt exceptionally kind.

Then we saw that about six feet further was another saying chalked on the sidewalk.  And looking ahead there was another and another and another.....!  Someone had a large package of sidewalk chalk and a lot of time on their hands. The entire length of The Esplanade had different chalked messages, roughly every six feet.  The six feet of separation that we are supposed to keep.  

Some of the messages were just short and sweet:

Some were kind of long, but thought provoking nonetheless

And some were just the right size.  Much like the 3 Bears story come to think of it

While I am not a person who has inspirational quotes or sayings sprinkled around my house, and I don't have a personal mantra or anything like that, I was absolutely delighted with these messages chalked onto the sidewalk.  Amidst all of the gloom and negativity and fear and anxiety that we are feeling every day during this time of crisis, I smiled.  I was charmed.  And it carried me through the rest of the day.

I have no idea who did it but I am so glad that they did.

​It really is the smallest things that make me happy.