Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
'Mom, Dad's mopping the street!"
I looked out the window of our mid-city condo. Sure enough, my husband was on the sidewalk below us, bright yellow janitor's bucket at his feet, heavy-duty mop in hand, earnestly swabbing away at some overnight spill that every other passerby had ignored.
Our visiting daughter was a little alarmed, but I recognized this latest street-corner manoeuvre for what it was: an escalation of what my husband himself referred to as his "fussy old man syndrome."
When we moved from our small-town home to an apartment perched over a busy city intersection, we figured that living with a little grime and grit was the sacrifice we'd be making to dwell in a livelier place full of intensity and motion.
Although we marvelled at the blinkered ability of local hipsters to step past the torn-open trash bags, broken furniture and rusted bicycle parts that lined the sidewalks in front of their flats and walk-ups like some kind of rubble-chic landscaping, we mostly gave our young neighbours an indulgent pass. After all, these kids had art to make, music to play and a big, wide world to engage.
Besides, when we were their age no one would have called us fastidious.
But then my husband retired and began to spend his days as default handyman and caretaker of our son's nearby storefront business. Faced with keeping the entrance to the shop clean and tidy, he gradually took ownership of the care and upkeep of the entire block.
From my home-office window across the street, I watched as he picked up – literally – where the city's early-morning sidewalk cleaner left off. Valiantly, persistently, he stooped and swept in his daily fight to keep a lid on squalor. Every day, it seemed, someone vacated an upper-floor apartment, and every day my husband struggled to corral the shifting mounds of cast-off clothing, crumb-filled toaster ovens, cracked mirrors and blackened cooking pots deposited at the curb.
I knew safety, not aesthetics, was his chief concern; but his preoccupation with preventing trips and falls was beginning to make the street look just a little more orderly.
One day, I heard the familiar brush-brush-brush of a push broom just below our apartment window. Like a forest fire jumping the highway, my husband and his one-man grunge offensive had crossed the street. There was certainly no shortage of challenge – a high-traffic bus stop and coffee shop at our corner generated a permanent ring of cigarette butts and crumpled paper napkins around our building.
But mopping? Our daughter was right: Washing the street really was a whole new level of DIY municipal maintenance. I realized her dad had finally decided to turn his attention to the last frontier of inner-city foulness – produced by dogs bound for the park and bar patrons hurrying home, both of whom, to put it politely, often failed to make it.
Until my husband showed up with his bucket of water (and, let’s face it, an impressive ability not to care about what people think), we could only hope for rain.
By that time, I knew my husband wasn’t the only fussy old man watching over our corner. I had seen our dignified, gentlemanly upstairs neighbour, trash bag in hand, rounding up the debris that drifted from the nearby park into the hedge of the building beside us.
How civil he is, I thought, until one day I noticed him methodically scraping away at some posters pasted on a light pole. The rebel in me reacted: What an uptight, authoritarian jerk! So what if the flyers weren’t supposed to be there? We music fans relied on that street-corner media. But as I watched him work, I realized I had it all wrong. He wasn’t scraping off every poster. He was simply removing the ones that were out of date. Far from being a grumpy old rule enforcer, our elderly neighbour was a helpful street-corner media curator.
We’re lucky, I thought, to have our fussy old men.
We’re all lucky, wherever we live, to have fussers of any gender or any age to round off the hard edges of our urban lives and bring an extra level of civility to our public spaces.
One night this past summer, hoping to catch a breeze, my husband and I settled on a bench in our nearby park. Moments later we heard a loud crash. We looked up to see a man standing in the middle of the street holding an empty bag, the shattered glass of a broken wine bottle at his feet. He swore, flung the bag to the street and lurched away.
My husband stared at the broken glass, and I stared at him. I was fascinated. Was this outside his maintenance zone? Just how far did his care-taking range extend?
It wasn’t long before he jumped up. “Gonna get a broom and clean that up,” he said. “That girl who walks the old dog always crosses right there – for sure she won’t see the glass in the dark.”
As I watched him lope away, I decided I would have a cold drink ready for him when he got home. It was late, and I was weary, but he was worth the fuss.
Liz Mayer lives in Montreal.