This street runs off a main thoroughfare, a busy main street with lots of traffic. The ravine that we walk in daily runs across that main street and continues on albeit not quite as lengthily as it does on 'our' side of the main street, and that part of the ravine provided an alternative opportunity for immersing ourselves in nature walks when the upper portion last fall and winter teemed with large heavy earth-moving machinery in the reconstruction of the bridges we use that enable hikers to pass over deep gullies running with tributaries of the main creek.

The street is a winding one, and at the other end it meets the street running behind it which itself meets the main street at its opposite end. That street is comprised of all single-family houses, built about 30 years ago by a construction company that roughly 20 years ago went out of business. They had a poor reputation for the quality of the homes they built and some people had serious problems with foundations and drainage. The homes on our street were built about the same time, but by a construction firm that had been around for much longer, with a superior reputation for quality-built homes. They had, in fact, built the home we owned previous to this one in which we had lived for 20 years, five years short of our time in our present home. On our street there are single-family detached homes and also attached townhouses. Running off the bottom half of the street is another which has only attached townhouses, smaller and more crowded together.

About halfway down the street live an elderly couple, likely younger than us, but one half appears to have serious health problems impeding free mobilization. It is a house that I would stop by regularly during my many years of volunteer door-to-door canvassing for a variety of charitable-health organizations. The man of the household always answered the door and not once would he yield to my requests for donation to aid any of those charities. Several times he informed me that he expected, when someone came to his door, to be addressed in French, although his English was excellent. Once, in exasperation, I responded that I too was bilingual and if he wanted to accommodate my Yiddish we would get along just fine.

Last year I gave up canvassing. Although the people living on the street are for the most part courteous and many of them generously respond to such charitable fund-raising activities, I ran out of the little enthusiasm I was able to muster to continue, after 40 years of volunteering. Last year we began seeing this man and his wife out and about, in a sense, on the street. He is a tall, lean and erect though fragile-appearing man, and she is short and plump and walks haltingly with the aid of a walker, pushed before her. He measures his gait to walk close by her, and their little procession of outdoor action takes place several times daily; morning and afternoon. He appears to be devoted to her well-being, obviously his partner of many years, and that is certainly to his credit.

His curt dismissals of my requests as a canvasser aside, when we'd see them on the street I would always smile and greet them; at first only she shyly responded. Over time, he began to thaw as well and genuinely smile at us. Previously, his smile had been condescendingly supercilious as he shut the door in my face. Over the summer months we would see them, and on occasion, at least once a week, she would be shepherded by a home-care worker, a friendly, talkative woman who liked to talk about herself.

Now, when we see the husband-and-wife duo, it is when we are en route to the ravine for our daily amble in there, as they slowly proceed up and down the street for exercise. Understandably, in this late-fall weather we're no longer to be seen in the front garden with our little dogs. She seems enthralled with our small poodles and loves to touch them if I'm standing close, holding one of them. She has the manner of an innocent child, and the bland face of a doll perched atop her short, stout figure. She likes to stop and chat, and now time has shown that her husband does as well. The weather will do for a topic, but then they seem comfortable enough with us now to talk about just anything, perhaps to relieve the tedium of their existence, tethered to short distances from home.