Interior decorators Hollister and Porter Hovey were featured on Cup of Jo with an apartment makeover and helpful tips to boot, one of which reads: “People often neglect hallways but it’s a great opportunity for a fun experience.”

Now, if we take that sentence and pretend it’s math, and say, “people often neglect x, but x is a great opportunity for a fun experience.” Then, using a crude expression you could “plug in” anything for x, to solve for fun. Maybe x is running errands. Maybe x is spending time running errands with someone else. Maybe x is running someone else’s errands. No matter, you can solve for fun.

Take my mother-in-law: game for adventure, disdainful of Covid-induced paranoia. Subtract the generational gap, the minor things that run the risk of grating on each other’s nerves, like a bit of hearing loss and someone else’s soft voice, and, with a dramatic sweep of the arm, create a vacuum of space on the imaginary whiteboard filled with scribbled sums and plop in a recurring Thursday afternoon visit. Let the things that are on her mind gush in and settle in the container of your calm availability. And then, as if by magic, Thursday afternoons become little short stories of their own: sweatpants shopping for her husband, stove browsing at furniture and appliance stores, watch-hunting high and low, wig querying in a nostalgic revisit to the sixties, replacement shirt shopping for a newly liquidated favourite brand, shampoo selecting for volume at Wal-Mart and a surprise black-out. And always, finding a treat: muffins at Tim Horton’s, McDonalds after lockdown, an introduction to Orange Julius, cinnamon buns from Tall Grass Prairie.

Don’t neglect the hallways!