What matters now

What matters now is the sun. It is out, is is warm, it is shining on the days and I want to walk in it.

As I age, running hurts. It hurts my joints, it hurts my shins, it hurts my lungs and my throat. Likewise, exercise DVDs – the Jillian Michaels workouts that got me through winter – have destroyed my wrists so that I can barely bend my hands back; I can’t lay them flat on the floor to do a pushup – I have to form a fist.

I never walked for exercise because it wasn’t fast enough. I got bored walking. I’d find myself wanting to break into a run so I could get home faster, so I could get my exercise over with, so I could get to the real stuff of life: eating, writing, drinking coffee, laughing with my family. But now, after huffing and panting and shredding my joints in the dark cave of our basement, but now that I’ve begun listening to podcasts while I move slower than a run and gentler than burpees, but now with an aging body and a warming sun, I crave walks like I crave coffee and writing practice.

Because what matters now is sunshine. I see it slanting through our spring-cleaned kitchen windows, I see it warming our back deck, I see it dappling the tender new shoots in the park and lighting the flowering Appalachians and I want to be out in it. I want to enjoy it in a way that I don’t when I’m gasping for air on a run.

So now, in spring, I find time, I make time, I carve time out for walks in the hills with my headphones. For long walks in the spring sunshine that does my moody self such good.