Right Neighborly

I've lived in several apartments through the years. In most locations, I've never gotten to know the neighbors. In college, I rented an apartment in Hamilton. I knew no one. I heard the neighbors fighting sometimes. But. Never saw their faces.

When Doug and I first got married, he lived in an apartment in Boston. A wedding gift was mailed to us and ended up getting left with the neighbor in the next apartment. She hand delivered it that night and declined my invitation to come in for tea. That was the only person we saw the entire time we lived at Charlesgate East.

In Atlanta, I only smelled their cooking. I never saw the downstairs neighbors. We lived in married student housing, and there were tons of families and kids and people, but I never saw anyone. There was one really hugely fat kid who made it known to the world he was wealthy, Floridian, and Jewish (by his Tshirts, jewelry and bumpterstickers on his Gold Volvo) and I saw him often but he was incredibly unfriendly and sneery and it was fun to watch him try to drive down our steep assed hill on a day when we were the recipients of an ice storm. I sat in the window and watched him slide the whole way down. Heh.

In Beverly, we lived in a building with four units. The downstairs neighbor was a single white mother with a black baby, and she'd give us her baby to watch once in a while, mostly so she could go out with her thug white boyfriend and get high. And I'd only see her when they'd have a huge fight and she'd come screaming up the stairs to my apartment for sanctuary. He'd stand on the stairs and scream at her, pounding on my door, and I'd try to call the cops but she wouldn't let me. In fact, they were fighting like wet cats on June 11, 1992. I was trying to sleep, it was 7am, and I sat up in bed really fast and hard and broke water, thus ushering my daughter into the world. The other two units were occupied by single white moms with little kids. Once in a while I'd chat with them on the back patio by the cars, and watch the kids play. I was pregnant with Jessica and they imparted all kinds of good wisdom to me like "you don't need to let the government know your husband lives with you, and you can get free heat and electricity!"

In Marblehead, we knew our downstairs neighbor and talked to him all the time. He died in his sleep one night and it was one of the saddest days of my life. The neighbor in the white house next door was a summer resident who spent his winters in Naples, FLA, and he'd bring me baskets of Dahlias in the summer. He was an avid gardener, and was always shirtless. To echo DivaTaunia, not in a shirtless Justin Timberlake hot sort of way, because he was very very old, and very very leathery tan. The neighbors across the street from us were a young Mormon couple, and we spent a good amount of time with them. Doug and Heidi. They moved to Utah half the year, he was a lobster diver, and had a business set up with a friend there to ship lobster to and make money hand over fist. She ran off with that friend, and Doug ended up staying in Marblehead, and I think he's still there.

In Lynn, I knew our downstairs neighbor and worked at the same office with her. Her parents were old and mean and lived in the basement with their 50 something year old son who smoked pot every single time they left the building for even a few minutes. The smell would come up the back stairs. The old man used to come into our apartment when we weren't there, and then criticise my housekeeping skills ("You left dishes in your sink. You can't do that. It attracts bugs." Well, fix my blasted dishwasher you addled old bat! Then there wont' be dishes in my friggin SINK). The guy on the third floor was a weird artist with scary toenails. And the old lady across the street would give Jessica knit things that had been handmedowned from her grandchildren. She wanted to see her handiwork worn by yet another child. She gave her weird stuffed animals too, rejects from the grandkids. We still have this one giant white bunny that she gave over to Jessie... it's in Geoff's room now. The family next door was totally messed up. Married white couple with two kids. She was pregnant at the same time I was pregnant with Geoff. She got an abortion when she found our her husband had an affair. I watched her throw all the husband's stuff out on the street one day. She told me she wasn't about to give birth to another one of his kids. She took him back right as we were moving out, and I wondered what she thought about having aborted her baby then. It made me horribly sad that she'd do that. I know abortion is all about choice and whatnot, but to kill your own baby because you are pissed off at your husband? It just didn't seem like a wise move.

And then we moved here. My neighbors on one side have six kids, and they're busy enough without having to socialize with me. I've talked to them less than a handful of times in the 8 years we've lived here. Across the street there is a family with three kids. I have talked to them once, when they had a yard sale.

Cattycorner across the street there is a huge house with three apartments in it. Owner occupied. It sold recently, and I met the two apartments worth of people who were being forced out due to the sale. They'd both been there for over thirty years. One of them, Mike, was friends with Clayton when he lived here, so after Clay moved out Mike would ask how he was doing. It was sad to tell him about Clay's passing when it happened.

The new owner has new tenants in the apartments. I've never seen the tenants. The new owner's name is Dick. He walks around shirtless and leathery tan. He's divorced, with two kids who are in high school. He's got a girlfriend who drives a Mercedes. I've talked to him two or three times since he has moved in, which is a lot more than the people I've lived next to for eight years.

He's creepy. What is with men and shirtless when they just aren't hot. Wear a wife beater T-shirt before you walk around nekkid, would ya?

And then, there's my neighbor directly nextdoor. Candy. She's a laugh riot, she's very sociable, she's made friends with people around the corner who are over her house all the time with their kids, she calls me and extends invitations to come over for a beer or to just hang out. She's lonely sometimes and with three little kids having an adult to talk to is more fun. I enjoy her company. She's funny as shit. She and I have nothing in common other than we're female and have children and stay home. And she's the only neighbor I've had any sort of a connection with in the last 9 years. We see each other in the driveways doing stuff and we walk over and talk on the fence. Her daughters hug and kiss me. Her three year old worships me. She's a fresh little thing, but totally goes out of her way to talk to me.

You can see that in the past several years I've not developed any really meaningful relationships with my neighbors. It's all cordial and friendly, but aside from Candy and her kids, historically there is no connection between me and our neighborhoods.

We've been here eight years now, and I feel kind of like we're settling in. Part of it comes from having kids in the public schools. It didn't start off this strongly with Jessica, because she wasn't as complicated a case as Geoff, but we're far more involved in school than when we moved here. I know a lot of my kids' friend's parents by first name now and feel very comfortable with them. I don't necessarily feel like there is a roots system here, the way my mom had one set up back in the day in the neighborhood.

My aunt told me that my cousin Thom, who lives a few towns away from here, moved into his house and instantly the neighborhood "thing" happened. They all hang out together, barbecue, the kids play, the moms hang out. It's tight there where they are.

I am not sure what social alchemy has to take place for this kind of bonding. If it is some sort of shared experience (ie: everyone has a masters degree, or everyone has a Volvo, or everyone is white, or everyone is gay...), or if it is just that someone is outside and sees someone when they move in and strike up the conversation as the unpacking is going on. The Welcome Wagon, as it were, in the form of a handshake or help with the couch when it is obvious that someone is struggling.

I know that Candy thinks I'm smarter than she is, and I know there are different things that she values that I don't. For instance, shopping. She loves spending money on stuff for the house. She's totally into that and has to show me the stuff she buys. I enjoy when she shows me stuff, but I don't reciprocate because I don't go out buying stuff for the yard. It isn't my style. We don't share the same tastes in music, but I gave her daughter a BNL mix CD and she loves it, they listen to it all the time, so she was at least open to hearing them and has grown to like them. I'm not sure if a pair of lesbians moved in nextdoor that they'd become my best friends, or if they'd find our whole Breeder lifestyle offensive, or, if politically we would not click. But I'd invite them over to hang by the campfire and offer them a beer. Just like with Candy and her husband.

I'm not looking for the kind of bond with a neighbor that I have with say, Aaron and Michelle, or my sister, or even Amy or Tess or Michael.

I think the Internet has given us different definitions of who our neighbors and hence our friends are. I've written here in the past that my neighbor and I can go for weeks without talking, but I check in with Michael twice a day to see if he's got something to say. Even though we're totally different in so many ways, I feel more of a connection with him than I do with the family with three kids across the street.

E-mail has salvaged some friendships that I've got, and if it weren't for email, I would have no idea what is going on with Rob, or Scott in Chicago, or Smitty. It is easier to bond with someone of like mind (or even not-like mind if there is something that clicks with you) through the internet than over the backfence. Especially if your neighbor puts up a big solid 6 foot high fence that says "I don't want to see you or talk to you." It's like banning your IP address from connecting to their server.

I'd like to know more of my neighbors, and not have to meet them if their house is on fire to offer them clothing and a blanket as we watch the three alarm blaze. I think it's sad that so many of us have little connection in our community or find that it's hard to dig in to make those roots. I know I have little in common with a lot of my kids' friend's parents. A lot of them are very wealthy, rather Democrat, somewhat elitist. Or they're just plain boring and uninteresting.

I'm glad for one neighbor that can keep an eye on my house while I'm away, but in the back of my mind I know all of them are. The way that I pay attention to what is going on at their houses when they aren't around. We all do it, we all know it. I think we're all there for each other in case of emergency, but we don't have a block-party and a beer on a weekly basis. And that's okay.

I'm glad you're my neighbor too.