Walking with my husband is like going out with a three-year-old. “Walking” isn’t even the right word.  He skips. He twirls. Sometimes backwards, or sideways, or a heel-clicking Yellow Brick Road sashay. One time he crossed a cinema lobby walking on his heels, just to see what it would feel like.

Oh, and forget straight lines. He has to jump up onto that curb or bench, then cross back to read the posters on the back of the bus stop. One minute he’s run ahead, then he’s bent over right in front to pick up a rock or cheer on a hopeful inchworm. Then he’s telling me to keep going and he’ll catch up just after he reads some historical marker or mimics a statue or runs up a side alley to see what treasures it conceals.

When I lose him completely, I’m not surprised anymore. I can choose to wait for him to bound back, or double back to the nearest bakery or odd mannequin display or street art that has captivated him. He’s a sucker for rubble and glitter and old wooden doors, the heavier and more-peeling the better.

He shuns earbuds, but there’s always a soundtrack playing in his head. Sometimes he starts clapping along or marching in time or dancing to that unheard rhythm. Other times it leaks out and passersby catch bits of 1980’s pop music, Broadway hits or obscure old commercials. If I ask him what he was singing or clapping along to, he stops, puzzled, not quite aware that it was there, and tries to bring it to the front of his grown-up brain to answer.

If we’re in a hurry, his arms are pumping exactly opposite his legs with an athlete’s determination. But on these light breezy days, those gangly arms might be swinging unhinged, or conducting an unseen orchestra, or flapping (yes, flapping). Sometimes they’re just suspended straight out like airplane wings - if I ask him why, he’ll shrug and say they just wanted to be there.

If it’s not a brave dandelion growing through a sidewalk crack that’s caught his fancy, it’s other people. Babies, of course, are irresistible magnets.  Old people too, especially the ones who are smiling together like the old friends they are, they overpower him with Joy. He ponders the reality of that woman on the low plastic stool selling individual cigarettes, the young lovers leaning against the boy’s moped, the gang of gangly boys in identical black sweats and buzz-cut hairdo’s. The world of people unfolds for him step by step, block by block, an ever-changing kaleidoscope for the imaginative mind.