It's a Walk In the Park

Today, a major victory: I took a walk out of doors.

When first I underwent the unpleasantness of excision from religious life, I was quite a mess. I wept copiously, every morning and evening, for nearly a year. It was an Olympic performance.

I took solace in mid-night walks. For whatever reason I felt that even the casual glances of passersby would trample my desired privacy, and so I would wait all day to totter around my neighborhood in darkness.

It was so soothing an exercise, I often passed most the night this way. Several times my poor father was worried enough to drive out looking for me in his rickety Chrysler.

Since the time I became so sick, my walks were suspended. Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months.

Today, at last, I returned, in the pattern of MacArthur. The weather was perfect. I made it half way before I was out of breath. Did I break a sweat? Men sweat, but ladies perspire.

I am advised not to overdo these things; but I imagine there is a daily constitutional in my immediate future.

In the meantime, I will continue to pass along the advice of those illustrious purveyors of wisdom, Ace of Base: "Take a walk in the park when you feel down, there's so many things there, that's gonna lift you up."