Most mornings and many evenings last summer, we'd walk by them, the elderly couple outside their small corner townhouse. By then, Eli had had his fill of fetching and sniffing and the occasional laser focused sprints back and forth across some imaginary finish line. I'd had my fill of idle conversation, but I never tire of watching the pure joy of dogs at play.
They were always outside, the elderly couple, drinking what I assume was coffee in the morning, and something a bit stronger in the evening. Sometimes, they sat together at a small round table; sometimes, one or the other would be up and about, tending to the flower beds that lined the curb. We would wave. I often wondered what they could possibly have to talk about after so many years, so many hours, but they seemed surprisingly content.
The place seemed locked up a few weeks ago when Eli and I walked by, something we do far less often now that the weather has turned cold. A tarp covered their table, held down by bricks. I imagined they were somewhere south now, drinking whatever the hour called for and chatting and tending to other flowers.
My kids are all in Chicago now for the holidays. I never tire of watching the three of them together. It is far more complicated than the pure joy of dogs at play, but it is, nevertheless, a marvel. They have the secret language of siblings, borne of a shared upbringing that somehow seeps to the surface when they are together, eclipsing the divergent paths they have taken. In their adult faces I cannot help but see the plump cheeks, the uncertain toddles, the neediness that made me so relevant back in the day.
This year, for the first time, I have no spare bedroom. My life has been downsized, which works for me. I have my new routines, and I have my coffee in the morning, something stronger in the evening, sometimes just with Eli, sometimes with others. Sometimes I chat, sometimes I don't, but I am content. I am certain that my kids wonder at the seeming sameness of my days. When they are here, I am reminded of how boring I am. All right, that's not fair; I am far more multi-dimensional than that, at least to them. I am ridiculous, occasionally helpful, often incredibly annoying.
Soon, we will all return to the lives we live, by some combination of choice and happenstance. It's easier in a lot of ways, but I will miss the joyful albeit fraught interruption of their presence, as a group. I will miss watching the three of them together, overhearing their shared sibling language. I will have to settle in, again, to marveling at the pure joyfulness of dogs, and enjoying my seemingly mundane existence. When spring arrives, I will look forward to that secret feeling of superiority that overcomes me when I walk past the elderly couple and marvel at the tedium of their contentedness.
