Sincerely Cliff

I was just about to sit down and look up the latest political nightmare when I got the text I’d been waiting for.

“Okay. We’re back.”

I threw on my shoes and ran down my steps. As I hit the sidewalk and saw their dusty car sticking halfway out of the garage like some prehistoric creature, I put some urgency into my gait.

P was sitting sideways in the backseat in pajama bottoms, a cat shirt, and a cardigan. His adult daughter stood by the car with his cane. She’s the one who texted me.

“Okay. How can I help?”

We had 3 flights of stairs ahead and an inclined walkway between us and the kitchen, which already had a chair waiting inside the doorway. But first, we had to get him out of the car.

P just had heart surgery. He was a big guy.

If you’ve ever tried to get someone out of a backseat, you know that it’s not really possible without getting pretty up-close-and-personal. I’ve hugged P at parties but never wedged my hands deep into his armpits and put my neck over his shoulder. His armpits were warm and damp; his sweater scratchy on my chin.

We got him up and stood with him while he caught his breath, me with my hands still in the warmth of his armpits. My thoughts raced about what to do if his knees buckled, but anxiety subsided with the appearance of 4 neighbors walking toward us shoulder to shoulder.

“The calvary’s arrived!”

One was an MD, one was her wife, one had the most perfect patch of lawn on the block, and one was a hippie artist known for his adorable dog who he walked around the block seemingly 5 or 6 times a day.

B appeared with a folding chair, out came the walker, another cane. The 4 of us gathered around the big guy. We had backups upon backups, hands on shoulders, hands on hips, there were hands on my hands. We weren’t going to let him fall.

One step, several deep breaths, next step. More breaths. Folding chair at the landings. Questions about the hospital stay, someone pointing out the cat in the window, questions about my daughter, comments on the weather, someone put in an air conditioner. Wow, that’s crazy, we just use a fan. Us too. Have you guys tried that new Middle Eastern place?

Finally, that last step, then up the path. 3 more steps, into the kitchen.

Yes.

P sat in his chair — it was actually his chair, the one closest to the window, as noted by his daughter, noticeably relieved standing by the fridge watching her dad heave in and out.

“You made it,” said his wife, on crutches herself. “You’re home.”

He dropped his head ever so slightly and, as if cued by this motion, his wife looked up at us with the sincerest of looks, the kind of look that says I was just in a hospital for 2 weeks and I’ve been reminded about what’s really important. The kind of look that stops you, that holds you.

“We are so grateful for all of you.” She looked at each one of us, fanned out in the doorway, eyes to eyes, her gaze not at all rushed. “Thank you.”

And then I realized my hand was still on P’s shoulder as he sat there, the corners of his eyes were wet.

“Means the world,” he said without looking up, his voice shaking.

This family was royalty, the second oldest family on the block, 31 years in the neighborhood. That would make me about 19 years old and in college when they signed the lease and put up the slide in the backyard for their only daughter.

V told me how the reason she knew this was the right neighborhood was because of the cats. “The cats were so trusting,” she said. “I knew it was a kind neighborhood.”

And I thought about my neighbors, not just the ones around me but the ones I had wine with the night before and the other ones who asked me where I bought my pressure washer. They both have kids, all under 5, and it hit me that one of those kids would grow up and go to college and be tall and strong and maybe be invited over in the middle of the afternoon to shove their hands up into my armpits and hoist me out of my dusty old car. And that’s just the kind of thing that can make me cry these days. And honestly, I don’t know why, but it does. It hits me deep, and there’s nothing I can do.

I stood shoulder to shoulder with a calvary of caring neighbors, feeling so lucky but a little sad too, because this moment was already leaving us.

We all stood still. We all felt the same thing.

I noticed on my way out that the slide in the backyard was cracked, and the top had a doll up on it, sort of a scary doll that had been out in the rain for too many years. Just seeing that thing made me cry a bit, thinking about B as a little girl sliding down and yelling in glee at the spoils of her new backyard — mom look, a lemon tree! Kinda like my daughter did yesterday. Yeah, exactly like that.

In leaving, I realized those steps and that railing would never be the same to me and that my impromptu waves to neighbors while taking out the garbage will always last a little longer, at least for a few weeks, they will.

It felt good, like I’d grown, which is a strange thing for a grown-ass man to say, but that’s how I felt and that’s probably why I didn’t go immediately home, and instead walked across the street and knelt down next to the kitty cat lying there in the sun, all stretched out like the warm sidewalk was the only thing in the world to care about.

And I sat down there next to her and stroked her soft, grey fur, while something inside of me settled down.