The Pace of the Street

What happens when we keep on running…

The day begins and the treadmill is already running. Everything shouts. Calendars bark. There is a queue of requests with faces and teeth. The kettle boils like an alarm and the alarm rings like a kettle and you’re a robot in trainers running after yourself. People need things. Replies. Minutes. Favors. A “quick” call that is never quick.

You tell yourself this is your unique chase for “success”.

On the corner where the bus exhales, she appears, as she does every day. The woman the town knows by sight and not by name. You recognise her, of course. You’d noticed the way her right shoulder lifts and her left foot hesitates, the way her words arrive like birds negotiating adverse weather. She walks the same loop at the same hour whatever the weather. You’ve occasionally wondered how long her walks must take. Cruel only because they can’t be hurried.

You have a meeting in nine minutes and a message that simply says “???” from someone who thinks punctuation is project management. But she’s there. Her kind face. A figure of strength against incredible challenge.

She stops, as she often does, and looks up at the trees. It’s unclear if it’s voluntary or not. She sees you. She does not look away. You feel that flinch inside. Followed by shame for not wanting to be there.

“G—good m—morn—” she begins.

The first impulse is to finish her sentence, because finishing is your sport. You are a champion of completion. Boxes checked, hours filled, a life rendered into a tidy graph of productivity. But you keep your mouth closed. You feel the muscles in your jaw argue with your heart.

“Good morning,” you say.

“D—do you—walk?” she asks, pointing along the pavement, a question marking the air like a small flag.

You check the time. Nine minutes becomes eight. The corner of your inbox nudges you from your pocket. You think: If I say yes, then I am late, and then I am trouble, and then I am the problem. And also: If I say no, then I am the problem.

“Sometimes” you say. She picks up on the “Not today” meaning of your response.

Her name is Lorna. She tells you that in three tries, and you hear all three. The syllables sound so uncomfortable to you. She points towards the bakery down the road recounting how wonderful their bread always is and how lucky we are for it to be on our doorstep.

You ask where she lives . “H—here,” she says, sweeping her hand at the pavement, the posts, the rose bush. Your rose bush. “H—here.”

The world keeps tripping over itself to be important. Vans beep. Phones tingle. A dog drags its owner past with a look that says, Can’t stop, this is the urgent business of being a dog. You feel your old life tugging at your sleeve with all its invented emergencies. But Lorna’s walk is a counter spell. Every few steps she stops to steady her breath and her balance before continuing again.

She tells you about the man who taught her to row when she was nineteen and the intensity of the cold as she remembers it. She shows you, with her shaking hands, how the oars feathered the surface and how there’s a moment in the stroke where, if you push, you lose the water, but if you wait, the boat answers. It takes time for the memory to reach you, and you can feel your old habits fidgeting for you to continue with your chaotic life.

You sense that there’s an enormous catalogue of stories inside her. You wonder if she ever gets to tell them anymore.

Suddenly, she puts her hand on your forearm. It is the first time she has touched you. “D—do you h—have a d—day,” she asks slowly, “w—where it’s all t—too m—much?”

The question drops into you and disappears, like a stone, like a truth. The correct answer is “most days” and the honest answer is “every day.” Your mouth opens and says, “Yes.”

She nods. “I-indeed.”

You laugh, and it is not the laugh you use in meetings. It has mud under its nails. This one really belongs to you.

Your phone pulses like a trapped moth. The meeting has started. You make your excuses and leave.

Lorna looks at you knowingly, offering you a kind wave that you may or not see. It strangely says thank you for your time.

Your day continues as it always does. More added to your to do list than taken off of it. The evening chaos ramps up too as the parenting tasks take over. As usual, you have an hour to clean up, prepare for tomorrow and potentially catch half an episode of a series that, after episode four, you still can’t remember whether you’ve seen.

The next day, after school drop off, you get home and see Lorna. Your smile is the most genuine smile you’ve felt in a while.

You stand still and wait for her to approach you. She’s so pleased that she gets to speak to you again. She tells you about the woman who sat with her on a wet bench for twenty minutes as she lightly jokes about how her sentences have too many hills and the woman wanted to climb every one.

The buzzing in your pocket return, but it’s more intense today. An urgent, last minute all hands call. You are not in it. A miracle. The sky does not crack. The market does not perish. Your name, not spoken in that call, does not flicker and die. You are still here beside a woman who calls the river by its old name.

“W—what do you d—do,” she asks, “w—when p—people n—need you t—too m—much?”

You think of all the ways you’ve been taught to say yes. You think of the soft bite of obligation in your shoulder. You think of the creative excuse creation process, the elegant lies you’ve become familiar with.

“I usually help them.” you say

Lorna smiles so slowly you almost miss it. It’s a knowing smile. One of experience perhaps.

“Has your walk started or are you about to finish?” You ask.

“I’m n-nearly t-there.” she says. You walk Lorna to her door. It takes thirty extra seconds to climb her three steps. She pauses at the top and touches the peeling paint. “T—tomorrow,” she says, “w—walk?”

You think about the factory whistle that starts your days. You think about your calendar. You think about drawing a line and defending it with a wooden spoon and love.

“Yes,” you say. “Tomorrow.”

The phone rings again. You let it.

On the way home, you practice your excuses for missing the meeting. It is not an apology. It is not a promise to squeeze yourself thinner so the demands can slip past. It’s actually not an excuse at all. It’s simply a no. Perhaps a bit more polished than that and fitting to the situation. But it’s effectively a practice you’re starting to build. Like a tool that will build a fence and a gate and a garden inside the fence where the things that matter can grow.

At your own door you look up and see the clouds passing unusually quickly. The wind must be so fast up there, but it’s still down here. An ironic smile appears on your face.

Inside, you open the laptop. The windows crowd in. You do something radical. You choose who gets your time. You reschedule three meetings and write one email that says: I can’t attend them today but if it’s urgent they can send you the minutes. You expect every kind of punishment. None arrives.

You do not fix the world. You do not fix yourself. You do something smaller, despite it feeling like the peak of transgression. You walk again tomorrow. You carry the time between each of Lorna’s words like it’s offering you peace and you are trusted with it.

The factory will keep roaring. Maybe this slower pace will result in you not getting that next promotion. Maybe it will be the exact reason that you get it. Your peace has a way of questioning the automatically negative false realities that you have learned to build in relation to incomplete data.

That reality may or may not happen. You don’t know. What you do know is that this coffee cup that you’re unusually stroking feels really nice to touch.