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Health & Fitness

Falls Avenue Turns Into Memory Lane

The weather finally cooperates to help this Falls mom make a simple dream come true for her kindergartener ... and gets to tap into her own childhood along the way.

When it came time to choose between private and public school for our older daughter, we weighed our options carefully. We examined academics, social options, uniforms, cost and the like. Eventually we chose our neighborhood elementary school for a mix of all those. Plus one more thing.

We could walk her to school.

I lived in a Cleveland suburb until I was 10 years old. From first to fourth grade, I walked to school. I walked with my parents. I walked with my friends. Once in a while, I even walked by myself. In the sun, in the rain, in the snow--walking to school was the norm. I'm sure there were days my parents drove me or picked me up, of course, but I don't remember any.

My family moved to Cincinnati when I was 10 years old and the walking days ended. We moved from a post-war square block neighborhood into a planned subdivision, complete with cul-de-sacs and a residents only pool. On the first day of fifth grade, I walked three driveways down to the bus stop and waited with a couple of the other kids from our section of the subdivision. Sure, it was a new adventure, riding the bus, but it lost its magic quickly.

There were no snowball fights on the bus. There was no hide-and-seek. There was no loud singing or tag. There was  a rule about sitting still in sticky vinyl seats and there was a rule about volume and there was a rule about backpacks in the aisles and there was a rule about eating ... it seemed to me that the bus was a big yellow box of rules!

The walks to and from school are burned into my memory as such a magical part of my childhood. When we realized we were less than a mile from our local school, I could hardly contain myself when I imagined giving my daughter the gift of walking.

In this day and age of bigger, newer, secluded, planned communities, many people are stuck driving everywhere. We are so lucky to live in the heart of a city like the Falls where walking or biking to school or the park or the library or the Y () or a coffee shop are possible. I have tried to get my daughters to appreciate the special gift we have been given simply by living here. I built up the idea of walking to school into the coolest part of going to school.

But as it often does, life threw us a curveball. An orthopedic surgery over the summer took me out of the walking game for the fall. My dream of a First Day of School Walk vanished. I'm pretty sure I was more disappointed than our daughter was.  Eventually winter rolled in and there was no hope for walking for months, even once I was on the mend. We looked forward to spring with the promise that we would walk to school "as soon as the weather breaks." 

We finally got our chance last week. Tuesday morning turned out to be rain-free and warm. I had driven her to school because I had some errands to run that day, but I made sure to get home with plenty of time to load our younger daughter into her stroller and make the 15 minute trek. When the kids poured out of the school, my daughter was confused at first when she saw me with a stroller and not a car. Then the wheels started turning.

"You walked!" she exclaimed. "Are we walking home?"

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I pulled her sneakers out of the basket under the stroller in confirmation. She kicked off her dress shoes (they are a whole other story) and pulled on her comfy shoes. And we set off on the journey home.

My daughter kept telling me how much fun it was, how she loved walking, how one day she could walk alone with her friends (don't hold your breath, kid), how she loved being outside, how the exercise from walking was so healthy ... I listened to her ramble on and on and my heart swelled. She pointed out every bird, squirrel, dog and crack in the sidewalk. She beamed with pride at how big a girl she had become, walking home from school with her mom and sister. And she told me over and over that she couldn't wait to do it again. I agreed.

There are times when parents try to recreate their own childhoods for their children in the selfish hopes of getting to relive their younger days. I won't lie -- I did get a piece of my childhood back on the sidewalk that day.

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