One of the many previously ordinary activities that has made me anxious during this COVID-19 era is getting close to strangers on the street. You know the feeling (I hope). You’re walking in your neighborhood. You’re on the sidewalk. Someone is on that same sidewalk, coming toward you. Sometimes it feels like a slow game of chicken — one of you is going to veer off the path before the other, after which you breathe a sign of relief. I’ve never been a particularly anxious person, but I feel like I now know what it’s like to have social anxiety.
To add to that disorientation, my family and I moved to a new neighborhood, a very nice section of Alexandria, VA, after the coronavirus crisis began. It’s been a difficult time to get to know any of our neighbors. (Though by chance, someone who lived about ten doors down was in one of my online cooking classes the other day.)
One of the activities that my husband and I have enjoyed since moving to the area is taking long walks at night in this hilly suburb, called Beverley Hills. (I didn’t misspell that. I supposed the spelling differentiates it from the real Beverly Hills.) We wait until after our kids go to sleep. With the days hot and long, the evenings, flecked with fireflies, bring some respite. My husband likes to bring a beer or a mug filled with wine, and we walk anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour.
On one of these recent walks, after we’d been walking for a good half hour, I wanted to turn back home. My husband wanted to go further. It was approaching ten o’ clock at night. There are few street lamps in the area, and it was pitch dark. I grudgingly agreed, and we walked down our street, towards a busy, commercial avenue called Glebe.
As we got closer to Glebe, a dark figure came toward us, seemingly limping along. “Help me, help me,” the person said. I stopped in my tracks.
While my inclination was to turn on my heels and walk the other direction, my husband continued toward the figure. I followed, maybe ten feet behind him, until we’d come close enough to realize it was an elderly woman. She had long gray hair and was wearing pajamas. “Help me,” she said, gasping for breath. She leaned on a cane, and wiping her brow, she looked as if she were about to burst into tears. She wasn’t wearing a mask. (Neither were we.) She explained that earlier that evening, when she’d opened her front door to get some fresh air, her dog had bolted out of the house. “And no one who’s walked by is willing to help me.”
Craig, in a bold move in these COVID-19 times, promised to help her. “What’s the dog’s name?” he asked.
He called out into the darkness to Chance. Like Ceasar Milano and the horse whisperer, my husband has a special sensitivity toward animals. He whistled and clapped and scanned the street. Within minutes, the dog — a medium-sized terrier with messy fur — emerged from some bushes and trotted toward him. He scooped the dog into his arms, and we walked the woman back to her house, just a few hundred yards away.
As my husband deposited the dog in her house, she gently scolded it. The woman told us her name and that she lived alone. Her equally elderly husband had recently moved into a retirement home. We wished her a good evening and so far, even though I’ve told myself that I ought to go back to check on the woman and her dog named Chance, we haven’t.
Have you had a similar experience during COVID-19? Please share on my Facebook page.