Walking Alone

Heading toward the university this morning.  My only fellow traveller at this time was a student running late for
elementary school band class.

I went for a walk by myself today.  I walked around the university I live near while most of the students were either still asleep or in early classes.  Campus was quiet, snow was just beginning to fall, it was a pretty morning.  I couldn't help but feel my aloneness more than I like though.  There were other non-students walking around campus and they all had dogs.  The dogs were happy, smiling, glad to be out.  So were their people.  I love a smiling dog.  Nothing is more cheerful than a dog who is out and about.  This morning though, they made me both happy and sadly uncomfortable.

I  like to be alone.  In fact, if I don't get a significant amount of alone time each day, I get a bit cranky. Even as a child I could spend hours alone, wandering in fields or reading in a corner, happy as a clam.  I have, also,  always had a dog.  Except a few months here and there as a child, I've had a dog.  When I was in college and my dogs lived with my parents an hour away, I missed them every day both as the unique personalities they had and as for the undemanding companionship they provided. I guess when you think about it, I wasn't ever really alone.

Right now I'm between dogs again and it feels really unnatural.  We have puppies on the way but today I really felt the absence of the two elderly dogs we said goodbye to last year.  A part of me is glad the puppies were not here when our old dogs left.  The space allowed us, especially the kids, to feel their absence and grieve them specifically.  They were wonderful dogs and deserved to be grieved, not just for their place in our history, but as individuals in our lives. My reason for missing them today was selfish.

While walking this morning, I wished for a dog.  Of course I would really like my old dogs, but at the moment a generic dog would do.  I know it's silly, but it feels wrong to be out walking leisurely by myself.  I live in an outdoorsy place.  There are always walkers and runners and cyclists all over town.  I live down town where students walk to class, people walk to shops, art galleries, the theatre.  When I'm going somewhere, I never feel self-conscious but just being out because I could today, I felt off.  I wanted a reason to be out.  Probably habit.  When you have a dog, you have a purpose for walking and I have always had a dog.  A reason to be out.  I felt sort of naked today without one.

I wound up cutting my walk short.  I only walked around upper campus before I turned around.  I went back home, fired up the treadmill and caught up on Downton Abbey.  I'm likely to go walking alone at least a few times before our puppies are old enough to come home in April, but this first time out while truly alone was thought provoking at the least.