The Walk...

When I first started working downtown, I parked in the garage under my building. It was crowded and expensive, so I opted to look for a more cost effective place to park. I found a lot right outside of the parking garage for only $65 a month, a far cry from the $130 and change that I as paying in the structure, so I began parking there. After a few days, I discovered that instead of walking through the dark garage, beginning my mornings in corporate America with the smell of exhaust fumes and the sounds of muttering and yawns over coffee coming from the mouths of people who would rather be anywhere but there, I discovered I could walk down Andrews St. just a few feet and walk down the Genessee Valley Riverway Trail all the way to my building.

This may not seem particularly important, but let me explain exactly why this is so prevalent to me...

I wake up at 5:15 every morning, and rush to get to work. Shower, wake up the baby, get us both dressed and fed, teeth brushed, in the car, hustle hustle in my business casual to dump the kid off to strangers to raise him for me as I curse my way through rush hour traffic to go crunch numbers at an hourly rate. The stress of suburbia still weighing heavy on my shoulders, I step into my morally bankrupt office where the clock flies faster than fingers can keep up, deadlines come and go before we can catch our breath, and our boss pretends as though the world will end if we don't get everything done.

The walk along the river is a bridge, my bridge, my sanctuary between the pressures of being a mother in suburbia and the stress of being a corporate slave. I have roughly 7 minutes between closing my car door and opening the door to the First Federal Plaza in which I can just... breathe. Forget about white picket fences and day care tuition, forget about the suits and ties and clicking heels and just watch the river beside me.

It's become the best part of my day, really. the walk.