Northridge. Two years after the earthquake.

I get up, dress for my trip to the YMCA, brush my teeth, sharing the bathroom mirror with my six foot plus son who has already donned his tie for work, when, quite unaccountably, I change my mind.

I will not go to the Y this morning. I will take a walk instead.

I travel to other people’s cities and I find them exotic, picturesque. I read of other people’s lives and find them eventful, full of fairytales and adventures.

My own world is bland. I say good morning to the cat, walk down the sidewalk. It’s a normal California morning. Blue sky, not too warm yet.

The house across the street shows no sign of the fire, which brought four trucks out for three hours in the middle of the night before last.

The German lady two doors down stands in the middle of her new lawn, a tangle of waist high weeds. There is no sign of the miracle grass, which she spent three or four days planting, weeks ago, and has assiduously watered daily.

She smiles.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning,” I reply, “How’s your lawn coming?”

“I think I see a few blades, here and there. Maybe they will spread.”

“Maybe.”

On the main street, I look for the regulars, the other morning walkers I’m used to meeting. The cowboy, a little old man with a cane and bowlegs, who always wears an enormous cowboy hat. The man who walks his dachshund every morning. The oriental gentleman with his pipe.

I always say good morning to everyone I meet. Some ignore me. The cowboy started out that way. After a few times, he began to smile when I greeted him, though to himself, not to me. Now he waves if he sees me from the other side of the street.

The homeless guy greeted me the very first time. Every morning he walks his dog, down to the local supermarket, and takes a bag of castoff food back to the park, where he provides breakfast for his friends. A sort of one-man social service.

None of them are out today.

I see one new face, a young man, walking with serious purpose. I say good morning, but he just stalks on.

I cross the street by the Presbyterian Church and head homeward. About halfway back I must pass a block wall, which hides a vicious dog. She likes to lie in wait for me until I am right next to her, then come up suddenly, over the fence, scaring the daylights out of me. She can’t actually get out, but she has often caught me daydreaming and left me pumping with adrenaline. This morning I am ready for her, but she doesn’t come.

Then it happens.

I see another young man walking toward me; his hair cut close, his eyes intent on the ground. He looks a little tough to me, a little scary. I almost omit my greeting. But as he approaches I change my mind and smile.

“Good morning.”

He looks up.

He stops.

He sticks out his hand. I instinctively shake it.

Then he speaks. An unintelligible garble comes out of his mouth, and as I look into his eyes, I sense that he is limited mentally. He grasps my hand in both of his, lifts it to his face. He rubs his cheek against it, while I stand, too stunned to react.

Then he kisses my palm. Not a dry peck, either, though not a particularly sloppy one. This goes on a long time, and I realize I must bring the kiss to an end – he won’t. I gently pull my hand down, and he lowers his, back into a handshake. I squeeze his hand and pat the back of it, then let go.

He turns and walks on, apparently quite pleased with the encounter.

Suburbia, like the small towns I grew up in, has its own charms. Those towns had their squares, their water towers, their big front porches. But there is something special about the alternation of manicured lawns with tangled crabgrass and unwatered dirt—or the manicured crabgrass in front of my own house.

There is something also special about the sidewalks, tilted by roots, patched with blacktop, suddenly soaked by early morning sprinklers in front of just one house. And the fact that the sprinkler soaked sidewalks do not necessarily mark the manicured lawns.

I try to sort out how I feel about my encounter with the young man. I have friends who would have been revulsed, and friends who would have claimed, at least, to be honored. I feel neither. Perhaps a little pleased I didn’t jerk my hand away, pleased I allowed him his experience, whatever it was.

It doesn’t make me feel good. It doesn’t make me feel bad. It doesn’t feel strange. It just feels human.

Back home, I watch the shadow of a humming bird on a windowpane. Not the bird, just its shadow.

I wonder if I would have noticed on another morning.