Shelter in Motion
It’s possible that my wife, Peggy, and I have applied the State of California’s now one-year-old “Shelter In Place” order slightly differently than some. Oh, we’ve been compliant; even diligent. We place ourselves in the presence of others only sparingly, wear masks, and otherwise quite carefully adhere to our state and county guidelines in an effort to keep ourselves, our family, and our community safe. But it’s not as if we’ve been exactly standing still.
It was March 16, 2020 when six San Francisco Bay Area counties issued “shelter in place” orders for their residents, which included us. Whoa, I remember thinking. Are we really not supposed to leave our house? I’d never lived under so much as a curfew. This is the image which came to mind, recalling the sign from the 1950’s which my grandfather had in his basement when we were kids:
The “stay at home” order, we learned, included exceptions for certain activities, walking outdoors among them. Therein lay our solution: we would walk. Even more. Our neighborhood became our domain to a degree that it had not before. And we weren’t alone. “Rush hour” took on new meaning in our suburban-feeling San Jose neighborhood. At the same time that we learned to respectfully maintain appropriate distance from other walkers, we came to greet and routinely see neighbors of ours previously unseen. In so doing, we came to much better appreciate the magnitude of our blessings. This “house arrest” could hardly be any finer, and it was a condition not at all universally shared across the country or the world. We lived in a single-family residence, and in so doing, felt safe from the virus in our own dwelling. We had our family of four, plus two young cats, for company. Our front yard could effectively extend as far as our neighborhood’s leafy streets, giving us ample room to safely enjoy blue skies and change of scenery from our four walls. Not insignificantly, we wouldn’t have to leave home for work, as the financial advisory business we own was already designed to operate from our house, and now would be full-time.
Somewhere between college and these past few years, as with many of us, professional obligations and the routines of life have conspired to squeeze the time I’ve had available to devote to sports. Not that I haven’t succeeded in pushing back. I did qualify for the New York Marathon in 2016 as well as the Boston Marathon the following spring, for example – two achievements I honestly never visualized being able to accomplish. But building a career has not always been conducive to building great fitness nor to spending considerable time any given day outdoors.
In our fifties, having recently lost a brother as well as friends, we are mindful to continually veer in the direction of implementing and maintaining healthy habits. Peggy is a wonderful cook, and beneficially looks for new and interesting ways of incorporating more vegetables and generally more healthful ingredients to our nourishment regimen. We get regular medical checkups and otherwise try to maintain health-prolonging habits. Heck, we wear sunscreen, floss, and take vitamins. OK; we also do and eat more of certain foods than we probably should. Make that pretty certainly should. (Beer is good for you, right? It is really good, craft beer.)
Meanwhile, the radius of our neighborhood walks started expanding. Downtown Campbell isn’t that far at two miles, we reasoned, and thanks to Peggy’s creativity, we could reach it almost entirely on quiet streets. A bonus on a route which became routine is a very welcoming cat named Lilly. “Kitty therapy” became a feature of our walking adventures, mindful as we are of the risks of patting cats which people outside our pod quite certainly also patted. Right around the corner from us, in fact, live Tiny and Avocado, two adorable and affectionate kittens who charmed us routinely until their “parents” thought better of having much of the neighborhood loving them with their hands. (Good call.) In another direction, Santana Row, at less than two miles, felt newly accessible. To say our horizons expanded is entirely appropriate. My brother-in-law’s spare bike, tethered to a trainer in our garage, has become an almost-daily destination, where I’ll pedal, watch the neighborhood families stroll by, listen to music, and read on a music stand in front of me. That stationary bike became a sort of meditation zone for me, a place where I could be both self-indulgent with entertainment and feel connected with the gentle pulse of life on our street – all while sweating out fitness in a way which did not significantly aggravate my surgically repaired knees. We even took up yoga. Now that’s been humbling. And we thought we were athletes! Truth be told, prior to being largely confined to our home, we’d never made a three-times-per-week habit of this discipline which has clearly improved us. Plus, we bond around the suffering and a new common enemy: the instructor.
We even began to compete with one another for the opportunity to walk. No, you take the car and drop me off. I’ll walk over to meet you. Amazon return? We’ll both go. On foot. Because neither of us was going to pass up that motion.
In time, Peggy and I found that we were dedicating a material amount of time each day to moving. In addition to our “company meetings” which we held while walking our neighborhood streets, we would periodically pursue weekend hikes on secluded trails with our ever-present masks. We’d walk to the post office several times a week…because we could. The step count kept growing. Quite a bit. We’d flirt with an old question: are we nuts, doing what we’re doing?
In hindsight, the activity level we’ve managed to maintain this past year wouldn’t be so surprising to anyone who knows us. It really isn’t inconsistent at all with our long-held habits. As we say in finance, our recent pattern more closely resembles a reversion to the mean than it does any particular deviation from “normal.” My orthopedic surgeon, observing the degeneration of my knees following three arthroscopic surgeries over the years, concluded “you’re addicted to exercise, aren’t you?”
In my early years I was an energetic lad. As long as I can remember, I’ve been an aspiring athlete. Cases in point:
So perhaps this past year has not been so much of a surprise as it has been an adaptation. From ancient times, humans have spent much of their day moving. Over the centuries, as specialization of labor allowed us to move less, our “progress” has meant that as a society we incorporate much less physical activity into our lives. Here in the 21st century, so many demands on all of our time have conspired to limit what tends to be categorized as “free time.”
Peggy and I have pushed back. As our own adult lives have advanced, we have fought the tendency to sit with responses such as adult league hockey and softball, 5K and 10K running races, downhill skiing, cycling, and diving, to name a few. This motion is part of what makes us who we are. It also soothes our souls. Hopefully it keeps us healthy into our later decades, also.
Now, some might say we’re slightly fanatical with respect to exercise. Don’t get me wrong; neither of us is an ultramarathoner or a former Olympic or professional athlete. We just have a lifelong disposition towards movement. The fact that we still feel partly child-like is something we celebrate. To this day my wife and step kids describe my “squirrel energy.” And they’ve only known me since my forties.
In the meantime, we’ll keep moving. (Though possibly slightly less in time.) And we’ll keep telling ourselves that we’re not overly crazy.
