Wednesday was National Walk to School Day. My neighborhood is in close proximity to four schools, so students ambulate nearly every day of the academic year. For this event, we gathered in the local park to head to school en masse. I wished I could have bottle the excitement as my kids and I had to leave the house even earlier than usual. Coffee would have to do.
In addition to the students ranging from kindergarten through high school, there were strollers, dogs, bikes, scooters, police officers directing traffic, grandparents and neighbors waving from porches, trees waving their branches in the breeze, singing birds, buzzing bees, and nervous squirrels.
The route to the elementary school was about three-fourths of a mile, but several kids made the trip twice as long by running back and forth along the sidewalks. Sipping our caffeinated beverages, we parents chatted about Saturday soccer schedules and the virus that’s making its rounds.
A young child stooped over the sidewalk, drawing my attention. She carefully picked up a worm between her thumb and pointer finger, causing the pink creature to wriggle for all its worth. The child held on to the squiggler and slowly deposited it on the grass. Then she continued walking, searching for more critters to save.
Enchanted by her rescue mission, several classmates imitated her stooped gait and slow pace, resulting in the safe transfer of more worms and a shiny black beetle from the exposed sidewalk. They didn’t transport any ants, but because of the children’s studious attention to where they stepped, many insects escaped a grisly end beneath the sole of a shoe.
And so, National Walk to School Day taught lessons in patience and kindness. And every single one of these critter-caring children still made it through the main doors before the tardy bell.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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