In October 2020, my wife, our dog, and I moved from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon. It was the thick of COVID, and hardly a human walked the streets.
Slowly, very slowly, we forged both human and canine connections. Friends of my parents-in-law helped us settle into our new hometown. Our Lilly, the Boston terrier, befriended a Frenchie in our condo complex. Everywhere, people smiled, waved, and stopped their cars to let us cross outside marked crosswalks.
Still, we felt lonely. The holidays magnified these feelings. Most of our closest friends live in the diaspora, having also moved out of Los Angeles. Age peers in our religious community stayed within established cliques. To expand our social circle, my wife and I began exploring volunteer opportunities and art/music classes.
I was feeling pretty sorry for myself walking home after a dental procedure last week, my face half-numbed with Novocaine. Wiped a trickle of drool from the corner of my mouth and thought about the many stroke patients I treated as a medical speech pathologist. How embarrassed some of them felt when others looked at their faces. “Who’d want to look at me now, with my half-numb face?” I thought.
My new friend in the hood.
Right then, a grey cat trotted the weathered sidewalk toward me. Her eyes widened with recognition. I’d not seen her before, but she acted like a dear friend, rushing toward me as I stepped off the jetway (when you could still greet people fresh off the plane). I knelt. The cat sniffed my hand and leapt into my lap. From there, she did a catwalk up my arm and across my shoulders. I smiled my Novocaine smile as she planted on my chest and licked my neck before she hopped off and weaved between my knees, purring. She arched her back to my pets, then watched me disappear down the block, turning now and then to flash her my crooked smile.
After the Novocaine wore off, I took Lilly for a brief walk. I cracked a full smile upon passing the house of a neighbor who never fails to leave a bowlful of kibble in her garden, on which passing dogs can snack. I had learned from another neighbor that the person who set out the kibble maintained this ritual, though her own dog would likely not live to see New Year’s Day. Through the neighbor’s window, I caught her eye and waved. She lovingly took her dying pet’s paw and waved back. My heart melted.
We are, all of us, ultimately alone. That’s inescapable, since we live within the bounds of our bodies and lives. But that condition doesn’t sentence us to a lifetime of loneliness.
The day I walked about with a half-numb face, I was willing to look for new friends — and willing to find them.
Happy New Year to everyone. May you find the friends you’re looking for.