Just before my husband left his position as a Dominion Customs Appraiser with Customs and Excise, a new recruit fresh out of university joined his department. They had but a short time to become acquainted before my husband left to join International Trade. Many years later when we moved to our current home when I was walking up our street from the bus stop after work a man stopped me. At that point we hadn't yet been introduced to all of our neighbours. He introduced himself as the owner of a house up the street, across from ours, and an old colleague of my husband's. Turned out he was the fresh young university recruit.

He and his wife had three very young children. Ours were then in their 30s and off on their own. Their youngest was a beautiful little boy of two, given to playing in his driveway with an assortment of little trucks, not often seen, as  he grew older, in the company of other young children on the street. Their two daughters, older, were beautiful girls, one short and neatly packaged with brunette hair, the other tall and blonde. In time all three children attended university though the boy dropped out while his sisters went on to achieve professional degrees.

They were over at our house yesterday afternoon for a bit of a chat. Usually our chats take place in the out-of-doors, come-by-chance as we pass on our way to the ravine's ingress just up the street for our usual daily walk in the forest with our little dogs. We had retired twenty years earlier, and they were relatively new retirees. He took up guitar playing and cooking classes, and she loved puttering around the garden, much as I do. She is handicapped, however, as I am not, with arthritis. And she recently underwent knee surgery. She moves slowly and awkwardly, and with obvious difficulty.

It is odd how life has this habit of throwing people together who at one time shared something in their lives. By chance, another man who was a young inductee into the federal civil service fresh out of university whose father was a colleague of my husband's also moved to this street with his wife. There is little physical resemblance to be recognized in this corpulent man to link him with the lanky, tall young man my husband recalls. But he is now another retiree, although he does consultancy work on contract.

This street which we moved to twenty-five years ago, is quiet, backing on an area forested ravine, seeing little traffic, a perfect place to raise children. And most people who had moved to the street several years before we did, into newly-built houses did have young children to raise. The very young children whom we became familiar with went through the usual childhood phases, and we knew them all. Friendships were made between them, and later broken, and eventually children attended post-secondary institutions and made their break with the street, moving on to live lives of their own.

This has become a street of retirees. Sprinkled with the presence of young families as people move out of their homes into more manageable spaces more congruent with their physical needs and abilities. And the process of life ongoing continues.