I noticed first his focus. It was as gentle and constant as the slow strokes of his hand, tousling the hair of his dog’s head. He was seated on the end of a bench, under a tree, there at the edge of Duboce Park on the first bright, warm and brilliant afternoon of the first day of San Francisco’s three-week October summer.
The man was young. Immediately I knew… I don’t know how… that his dog was not. He stood, still in the over-warm day, uninterested in the activity around him, accepting… as I am sure he had for years of days before… the love. And, returning… gently, too… the young man’s gaze with an equally gentle love.
First the hand moved forward, fingers spread into the hair… only a hand’s length on his dog’s head… then it turned palm up and brushed back…again no more than a hand’s length. Tousling, un-tousling, smoothing, soothing. Except for that clear affection, there was no other movement. And their gazes never shifted… never drifted… never lost their mutual focus. Beyond them nothing else on that bright day existed. Behind them, on the long, broad block of green sloping lawn, dogs and those who loved them, played. On other benches, under other trees at the edge of the green… shaded from the unusual warmth as they were… people from the neighborhood of lovely Victorians chatted and… from time to time… called to their dogs at play… but, idly. Behind me, on the steps of the home nearest the park, a young man with a guitar sang to his love as she smiled, leaning comfortably into his shoulder. But, before me, the young man with his dog… they, only, existed in their world… only.
Minutes passed, then more and many more. Leaning forward, the young man’s focus, his caresses, were constant. Invariant. Their silent conversation was long, important and full of love. Then the dog moved and he moved as an old dog does. One hind leg faltered, near collapse, with the movement… as with an old dog. And, as only with an old dog, lying down was an awkward, careful negotiation with gravity… and brittle bones… and inelastic, unstrong muscles. He settled with dignity… defeating, for a moment, age… at the young man’s feet, looked around once, then returned to meet the young man’s gaze. Only the dog’s had ever drifted.
I watched for many minutes more, though they would not have noticed had I watched a day.
What a wonderful, long, enduring conversation was going on there in Duboce Park and how many moments recalled, in memory. A lifetime for one and as important as a lifetime for the other. How many assurances, comforts, carings, adventures, sweet joys and delights… passing in silence and caresses between the two. No break would there be in that gentle focus, gentle caress and shared, gentle love. No break.
I knew the moment. Many do. Our lives so outrun those of our dogs. We must seem immortal to them; ageless as they age, so inevitably, so sadly. And always comes the moment, the one before “goodbye”. When we will be reaching, searching with hands open to fully caress and profoundly touch, absorb, and make stay… “stay”… in our soul’s memory, this life monumentally important, monumentally sweet. Willing a “never to forget” and “always, ever to be”… thereby to hug them… beyond deep and beyond deeply returned… in that moment. T0 which they reply with their simple, calm, always loving, “I will”.
I got up from my bench to leave and blinked away tears. There was an airplane to catch. For a while, I had been privileged to glimpse a world of two, sufficient unto itself and beautiful on a most sweet and beautiful day. I looked back as I got to the bottom of the park and they were still together there as they were and had been. As they would be… together.