Smiling and waving as you reverse your car. Sunglasses on.

You’re going to an interpreting job. It could be a medical appointment or to watch and learn at a play rehearsal. Or maybe it’s somewhere for yourself like the gym for a yoga class or the beach for an energetic amble.

Of course, you began this ritual and as I hover waiting for its embrace, the arrival is still a sweet surprise. The roller-door descends and moving from the garage to the patio, I feel gratitude for this miracle of everyday punctuation.

A cheery melody. A petite suburban symphony as joyful as the piccolo trumpet solo on ‘Penny Lane.’

There it is. You honk the horn.

Toot-toot!

In your Toyota RAV, you surge down our street. A show of love, the sound’s both a fond farewell but also a promise you’ll keep me close throughout your excursion across our flat, murmuring city.

Now inside, I head to my desk or maybe I’ll wash the large saucepan I’ve rescued from the dishwasher’s clutches. These appliances are theatres of unceasing, marital contest. Ours is a gentle skirmish over a fundamental ideological question: what truly belongs in a dishwasher?

Driving out into the world in your enticing way, you take your warmth and kindness, and the fortunate beneficiaries will be friends and appreciative strangers.

If operated deftly, car horns are versatile instruments. Communicating anger with a single, sustained attack, they can also surprise with a sudden chirp, but your vehicular sonata rises above the ordinary by offering double-noted devotion.

Cascading through the front door, and up the passageway, this amber sound splashes out across the back lawn. Like a bouncing catamaran, it also sails over our home.

In our mostly undisturbed neighbourhood, this rare private and public expression springs over fences and into the sanctuaries of others, a sonorous reminder of the easy joys found in our seaside enclave.

So, as you dash into the realm beyond, leaving behind the fading tones of your affectionate toot, I’m comforted that this aural hug, this little wonder, will linger in the quiet spaces until your homecoming.