Suddenly, I’m the one who can be found outside as day fades into night and the sun slips deeper into the horizon, beckoning me to follow it. I allow myself the freedom to turn in whatever direction I want, both in my walk and in my mind.

As I walk, I pass a jogger, or a man walking his dog, or a couple taking a leisurely stroll. Of course, we all move aside to ensure there’s six feet distance between us, our eyes locking in understanding.

“It’s not you,” I want to say. “I mean, it might be you. And it might be me.” We exchange a small smile. In that moment, even though we’re a potential threat to one another, we manage to morph that threat into a gift, as we step aside to protect our distance.

Some of the others out at sunset have become familiar. A week or so in, I nod my head at a couple, and a woman waves at my baby. I wonder if this means they recognize me too, and if they wonder where I’ve been on the days I couldn’t muster the energy to make it out of the house at my kids’ bedtime. Do they feel this camaraderie as well? Do they recognize the shared gift in our time alone outside?

At first, the streets were empty, and aside from the lone jogger or infrequent car whizzing by, it was just me. Just me and the baby in the stroller and the road, the silence bringing with it a keen ability for observation.

Like a spotlight projected upon something that’s always been, but never noticed, the silence shone a light on a woman looking down at her phone as she drove by. I checked myself; I’m not here to judge. In fact, the street that had been my mere acquaintance for much of my life has become an intimate friend. If ever there was a time to look inward, it was now, in the context of my solitude. My walks reintroduced me to myself, and I’d return home invigorated and alive.

As time went on, and the days passed both slowly and quickly, I savored those evening walks, the fellowship between myself and the world at large, the solitude of the roads and all that was conducive to getting to know myself.

Recently, though, I’ve sensed some sort of shift. It’s been weeks now, weeks of the brisk late-afternoon walk being my only outing; weeks, I’m sure, that jogging has been the only outlet for the man in the red shirt. Weeks, I know, of the couple counting an evening stroll as their date, wishing they could venture just a bit further.

We’re getting tired. And the roads are getting fuller.

Is it just me? I thought one night, or does that man’s jog seem to have petered out a bit, as if to say, “Okay, enough already!” Am I seeing things, or have the traffic lights slowed down, mirroring our lethargy in their weakly changing lights? Am I hearing things, or are my sneakers mocking me, each step taunting “same, same, same…”

No, I realize, it isn’t just me. We’re all hearing it, seeing it, in the days that morph into each other with few distinctions other than Shabbos and daily tefillah. We’re all waiting, wanting something to change, while holding rather feebly to our new resolve to live in the present, to make the new adjustments we’ve implemented in our lives, to notice our family and ourselves and our world, and to relish it. We’re all caught in this web formed concurrently of both dreary continuance and startling insight. We’re waiting for something, even if we don’t know what that something is.

So I wait, and I want to stand still as I do so. But I try to remember that my job is to keep walking. To remain a person who moves. And even as the days turn into night, and the weeks turn into months, and things finally begin to shift in the world around me, I’ll keep moving. And I’ll try my hardest to never stop.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 696)