Walking

My favorite way to experience my favorite place

We moved into the community of Ocean View 16 years ago, not just as a couple, but as new parents with a 9-month old baby. Kieren learned to crawl within the first month we lived here, and the rest has been history, as young parents know. Our little one learned to walk on the front steps of the church outside our front door and then learned to ride her bike on the lawn and surrounding streets.

Who knew kids were so busy?!

Next we had Keller, and he needed a different amount of stimulation, so we often walked with him around our area in the evenings and afternoons to get out his anxious energy.

The little kids’ years are filled with a great amount of moving, and we did all that within our Ocean View community.

Movement has always been therapeutic for my busy and unsettled mind, and so early on I jogged and prayed along the streets of Ocean View and into the neighboring community of Ocean View.

I would pound out prayers for my children, for my anxiety-filled mind, for the ministries we were starting, for the relationships that were slowly building among new friends in our community, and for God to work in all the ways I desperately needed to see Him work.

After every run, I would come back into the community of Ocean View and look in awe at this place I was growing to love. There was so much action, so much variety, and so much color, and this unique place was slowly becoming home.

We had a car we purchased at the beginning of moving to Ocean View and also had a short-lived scooter—that is a harrowing tale for another day—but we always had ways to quickly drive in and out of the community for our many engagements and needs. And I quickly realized transport was a luxury in the community, as most people walked or took public transport. I began to wonder what I was missing while I jumped into my vehicle and zoomed quickly out to the “important things,” and what I was inevitably leaving behind. The gift of my children was that I got a taste of the real Ocean View life when we walked together, but something slowly stirred in me that I also needed to be walking in my community, even when not chasing little ones.

So I started to walk.

In the summers it was easy to walk, as you always needed another egg in the morning or tomato at night, so instead of driving to the store or somewhere else, I began to just walk to the local shop down the road to get what I needed. After a while it became comfortable, and in time it was my preferred way to travel around Ocean View.

When you are walking, you have a completely different experience of your surroundings. You feel the wind differently, you hear the music wafting from people’s homes, you smell the braai that just started up in someone’s backyard, and you say hi to everyone you pass. Actually, I still am not sure if that is how ‘normal’ people in Ocean View do it, but I decided early on to just greet literally every person I passed. Partly it was just to look each person in the eye, no matter their intention or plan. This is a township community that is rife at times with petty crime, and you are always hearing about the theft of a phone or something small. I knew what was possible, but I knew I had to just enter in. So I greeted and said a chipper ‘Hello!’ to every single person I passed, and honestly, anyone with depraved intentions was always so shocked I said hi and looked them in the eye, I think they forgot what they were doing in the first place.

Now, don’t get things twisted that my walking was a weird martyr mission. I know how to be safe in our community and only walked in areas I knew when it was daytime. But as time has gone on, many of those people are now neighbors and friends. I am not greeting strangers but members of my own community.

Step by step, Ocean View went from being their community to my community on these walks. Step by step by step it became our community.

Recently my daughter had over a gaggle of teenage friends, and once they all arrived we realized we didn’t have any chips, which, as you know, is downright the most important part of a teen gathering. “No problem!” I quipped. “I will just take a walk and go get some!” One of the girls shot up her eyebrows in an immediate questioning look, and I knew what she was thinking. I couldn’t possibly mean walk in Ocean View, right?

When I was a child and teenager, while we didn’t have a local shop down the road, I did spend my afternoons and summers on foot and bike all over the community, like it was my own world. My son Keller does the same at 13 years old because he has kids his age who live on all sides of our house. There is such a freedom in walking around your community, waving to your neighbors, and finding a simple joy in just being outside. It’s a gift again and again to me.

I walked to our store a few roads from us, waving to a friend and also saying hello to a few strangers. Often people say to us, “You have lived in Ocean View for so long now. EVERYone must know you!” That is definitely not true, although I am guessing many people know me as the overly strange white lady who still seems to live here. For me though, everyone is a neighbor in our area, and I greet them like we have just talked the day before.

I arrive back at the house, saying to the chatting kids who have long forgotten about me or food, “Here you go! Chips for everyone!” “Yay!” they say, as they immediately open the bags and resume their conversations. I walk to my room to sit alone again, but filled with a warmness from my tiny outing.

My tiny but holy outing, walking once again on the streets of Ocean View.

I thank God for the little gift, the nudge to get out and walk, that has blessed me time and time again, and brought me deeper into my home community.