Searching for a pulse in the suburbs

The thing that hits me first when I visit home is the silence. I don’t remember the neighbourhood being so quiet — the quiet only broken by trucks, SUVs, delivery vehicles and the odd car. These proxy sounds of life.

On New Years Eve, we went for a walk, maybe about 4 km. It was dark, after dinner. We passed just one gathering. Many houses had their lights out. We saw a single guy jump into a clandestine taxi cab. McDonalds was busy. We passed about 40 inflatable snowmen, 96 lit-up candy canes, 28 inflatable santas, some wire-formed deer, an inflatable Minion for some reason, an inflatable dinosaur wearing a Santa hat and eating a present. These were all lit up. We also passed about 52 decorative 5-ft wooden boards that all said WELCOME or CHRISTMAS or I SHOP AT HOMESENSE or whatever, leaned up beside main entrances; some with Christmas lights wrapped around them but most not.

These proxy sights of life.

We only passed two humans and a dog on the sidewalk. I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to say when they said hello, so I paused after they said “hello,” held back a too-late “Merry Christmas” and choked out a “hey.”

Otherwise, there was no one. No one walking to their neighbours’ for the night, no children playing outside, no one coming in or out of cars. No one walking around mindlessly talking about revolution as we were. Maybe everyone already was where they were going. Maybe people sat inside, curtains drawn, riding out the New Year socially isolating from their next COVID-19 infection. But it was New Years Eve. Surely the McGibbon - the bar that once was The Bar downtown and that is only a two kilometre walk from here - would be full. That is, if it hadn’t been demo’d to be turned into condos some time in the last few years.

But that silence, the lack of people — the distance between bodies and the empty streets — it’s normal. It’s

always this quiet. No one ever seems to be outside when I’m home. Children aren’t seen or heard.

Maybe that’s why there are so many inflatable holiday characters. They take the space where children used to play. Where we used to play — on front lawns, on the streets, in backyards. Maybe unseen but certainly heard. Children would ruin these magical characters. No parent would waste money on an inflatable Frosty if they know that the kids playing around it will destroy it before Christmas Day.

An inflatable santa hides the emptniess of these yards, these private lawns, the lack of people sitting out front or the notable absence of children playing.

It isn’t just the emptiness they mask — they also hide the fact that the season is off. It smells like early spring. It looks like early spring. These ostentatious characters decorate front lawns the way we decorate our climate-controlled living rooms for Christmas — with stuff. Because once, our lawns were decorated with snow. The snow would brighten neighbourhoods, dampen sharp sounds, reflect Christmas lights.

The snow attracted the children and these spaces were full of life.

As snow has become less and less of a feature of December in southern Ontario, an inflatable dinosaur takes its place — a decoration formed with the remenants of the real thing — a monument to what was before it was destroyed as we too stare down our own demise. Single-use plastics are out so better create demand for the annual-use plastics market.

It’s hard for me to not get morbid when I’m in the suburbs. There’s too much wasted space. There are too many symbols. Too many broken bonds laying in the streets, repeatedly run over by aggressive drivers or someone delivering for Amazon. Too many cameras staring at you from doorways, uploading your movements to the cloud, waiting for you to do something, like walk across their lawn or re-arrange their nativity set or something that will go viral.

The new life is utility alone. No one has time to take a walk any more and it’s too boring for children to go outside. We are remade by this new life, comforted by entertainment and pretend to be surprised when we realize that no one seems to be doing OK.