Walk a Mall in My Shoes

On periodic pilgrimages to SE Michigan, we often stay with Mom who has been retired for several years from various occupations:

Since awakenings from the Feminine Mystique(1) era, Mom has been variously a high-school English teacher in Oklahoma and Kansas, law school administrative supervisor in Detroit, Michigan, community college professor and business-writing course author in Port Huron, Michigan, insurance investigator and librarian in Galveston, Texas, shoe saleswoman and retail store cashier in Tyler, Texas.

I couldn't be prouder to have Mom as mom, especially considering she accomplished all her career and education feats—BA, Western Michigan, 1948; MS, Oklahoma City University, 1964—while raising three halfway-normal kids.  Nor do I reproach her for deciding to leave the workaday world behind… she's paid her working-class retirement dues several times over.

But I have wished she wouldn't take retirement to mean withdrawal from any meaningful social life outside the family.  Health problems associated with normal aging also cropped up to deplete her energies.  When visiting, I'd see her all too often sitting in her TV chair doing crossword puzzles, keeping abreast of Reader's Digest, playing solitaire on the computer, or otherwise seemingly frittering away hour after hour day after day.

And eating way too many cookies!

On one trip I decided to read her the riot act.

"You can drive, you can walk, I'm not going to stand by idly and watch you morph yourself to death into a chair Blob.  Get off your butt and do something, at least go to the darned mall."

Tough love from son #1.

She's a good mother, an exceptional person, I want her around for many more healthy years, and I felt I owed her my honest two cents of exasperation.  (I did not raise my voice.)

Well, shortly following that tirade, she's risen every morning, driven herself to one of the local shopping malls, and circumnavigated the space upstairs and downstairs for a total of a mile and a half per occasion.  Wendy Bumgardner, author of a fine all-purpose walking for health site, informs us a good rule of thumb for walking is 100 Cals lost per 150 lb. person per mile.  For Mom, that's one large cookie per visit.

As a side benefit, she's keeping her cookie appetite under control, too.

The difference in Mom's aura between now and two months ago, when she seemed to be succumbing to terminal lethargy, is as day and night.  She's lost ten pounds, she's renewed her enthusiasm for completing a book, and she's shown signs of life in seeking out the company of peers at the local bridge club and other venues.  She's even come to socialize with other seniors walking at the mall.

"A body in motion tends to stay in motion."  —Isaac Newton

When Mom was a girl, most people did not have access to automobiles; if you wanted to get from point A to point B, you either bicycled or walked.  Watch old newsreel footage of normal everyday Americans: hardly a single chubbo in the picture.  Today in Asphalt Nation, no one walks when he can ride.  Fat Albert(a) rules!  Just consider the proliferation of motorized carts at golf courses—golf being the quintessential walking man's game!  Sad.

Fortunately, walking is not yet a lost art.  Thanks in part to shopping malls.  Perhaps there is some irony in that.

Mallwalking offers advantages above the ordinary, regular walking mankind has been doing for centuries.  A mall provides a climate-controlled, level, secure environment for extended ambulatory motion.  You're among friends, yet not crowded.  And you don't have to worry about being run down by a motorist swerving onto the sidewalk after suffering a heart attack from too many Big Macs®.

Here at the beginning of the 21^st century, mallwalking seems to have become a seniors thing.  Seems an elite handful of the "Greatest Generation" want to get to the 100-year mark in a healthy format.  But my guess is soon after the first baby boomers start reaching the magic Six Zero (60) milestone in 2006, you're going to need reservations to hoof it at the local mall.

So fellow boomers and boomer offspring, walk the mall now, while the charm lingers.

We're here in SE Michigan, this time long enough for me to actually join Mom for a couple of walks at the Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi.  Twelve Oaks is one of the older malls in the region, and has managed to keep pace with the competition by staying up to date in store selection and superior building maintenance.  It has a comfortable, approachable two-story design.

Though I keep in shape by going to the YMCA and running on the treadmill, what is readily apparent from walking an extended period is it's real exercise.  The pulse quickens and the perspiration mechanics kick in to let you know you're moving longer than it takes to grab another scoop of ice cream from the freezer.

For an older person with slightly damaged wheels, Mom walks pretty fast.  Not being much of a speed walker (or as Dave Barry likes to say, "dork walker,") I'm keeping up at a pace that's faster than I normally move.  This is good, and even for an inshape boomer or "offspring of inshape boomer" the effect is an encouragement to more of the same.  I'll be back.

Finally—here's where the charm comes into play—a healthy shopping mall has the feel of a small community or a city sidewalk at dawn.  Arriving before the doors open for shoppers, with shopkeepers preparing their stores for business, sometimes children are playing in the padded play area, you constantly resist window-shopping the fashions or stopping to smile at the bright-eyed little doggy in the pet shop window.

Whatever your age, walking the malls is a perfect beginning to a productive day, a joy available not only to one's favorite mother.

1. Famed 1963 magnum opus of Betty Friedan that started the feminist movement, the part that's rational in any case, and influenced many women of the time to fulfill their potential as creative human beings. back to text