Thursday evening. My wife, Susan, and I walked with our Lilly, the Boston terrier, in that sweet little enclave just east of our street.
As we threaded the neighborhood, people were sealing themselves inside their homes. One by one, the heavy oak doors of Tudors and Cape Cods scraped across eco-efficient weatherstripping until locks fatefully clicked.
Through living room windows, single people and families could be seen curled up on their couches. Some practiced “social distancing” even with those closest to them. Others clutched the first of 17 bottles of hand sanitizer swept off the drugstore shelf earlier in the day.
It was not hard to imagine 39 rolls of toilet paper huddling in a bunker under their bathroom sinks. Or fistfuls of dry pasta standing stiff in the pantry, locked and loaded against Armageddon.
In the silence, I heard things rarely heard. The sidewalk filing Lilly’s toenails as she briskly walked. The sleeves of Susan’s coat scuffing against her jacket as she swung her arms. The finality of my breath surrendering to the air.
On an ordinary day, the whooshing of cars on the nearby 405 freeway dampens this symphony to a faint murmur and my ire against the competing noise rises quickly. But, Thursday evening, our every sound rang crystal. Painful because they vied with nothing.
Susan and I inched our relocation plans forward. We calculated how much we’d need to work in semi-retirement. Susan mused on jump-starting a new psychotherapy practice and I pondered the leap to per-diem speech pathology. Because she hates the rain so much, Lilly will have to be trained to go potty out on the covered balcony of our yet unknown home in the Pacific Northwest. Not a syllable of our discussion was lost.
I should have welcomed the stillness that allowed me to absorb it all, but I didn’t. The reverie was dreadful as a bird without song.
There were no dogs on the streets and no humans tethered to them. Lilly heeled beautifully, a model daughter. How could she learn to better curb her reactivity and how can we become better teachers without the furry distractions?
A sudden gust shuddered the naked canopies on Sutton Street and tree-fingers etched their angst in the gun-blue dusk. Lilly’s ears perked. She saw them long before we did. A little old lady and her pint-sized scruff muffin Lilly loves to hate ambled along the sidewalk across the street.
Lilly slowed, but did not creep into her brawling pose. She tracked her frenemy for a few beats, looked at us quizzically, then marched on beside us. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was surprised, even delighted by this passing ship and wistful that it had passed. I had assigned to her my disquiet in this quiet.
In that moment, I wished for nothing more than to revive the commotion I’ve so railed against.
I wanted the streets to live again.