In Case

"I can't even imagine living in a place like that," Heidi said as we idled at a traffic light across from a high-rise apartment building. "What would you do in the middle night if your dog had to go?"

"The elevator?" I shrugged. 

"That would be ugly if it were an emergency," she answered.

"Then maybe if there was a balcony, you could put a little emergency area in the corner. Kind of like a litter box for your dog." The light stayed red, so I considered the logistics further, picturing apartments I had been in. "I guess you could also put newspapers down in a bathroom, or the laundry room, if there was one."

Those words hurled my mind decades into the past, from my mother's apartment in Minnesota to the laundry room in our family's first house. "I think we used to put newspapers on the garage floor for our dog," I said, remembering out loud. "And then it was someone's job to change them-- roll up the used ones into a garbage bag and lay down clean ones." 

I pictured the two steps down and the single bulb illuminating a one-car garage in the Levitt colonial we lived in. Our '64 blue Ford Falcon was never in there, but our bikes and the lawn mower were. There was also an empty oatmeal carton with its bottom cut off, tacked to one of the side walls. It was a makeshift basketball hoop my dad created that we used on cold and rainy days with tennis balls, being careful to avoid the dog poop.

The light turned green. "I guess you find a way to make the situation work," I said.