Neighbors

Author note:  This is an intro to a series of essays on "Neighbors" that I have worked on for longer than I care to admit.  There are a dozen or so essays.  I intend to publish some of them here.  I invite you to comment.

Howdy Neighbor!

I got to thinking about the houses I’ve lived in throughout my life.  The rooms, the hallways, the alleyway below my window, the city block, the country road, the dead end scary street, the village, the hillside, the road view, the woods view, the pond view.

I got to thinking of some of those folks who shared each neighborhood with me. Neighbor: One who lives near or is adjacent to another; a fellow human being.  Neighbors, the ones who waved or greeted or nodded each day as we passed each other on the street, or jumped in and out of our cars, or sped out of driveways and down the road.  The ones who lived their lives mysteriously, moving in and around street corners with just a shadow behind them, those I never got to know.  Yes, they left their impression also.  There were some who helped out in a dire emergency and I was thankful enough to kiss their feet at the time, but soon afterward, when all the hoopla died down, we reverted to the nod and the wave.  I know people who moved from their family abode to their married home where they live out their entire adult lives, changing wallpaper and paint color and upholstery and cabinets, but knowing their rooms like the very skin on the back of their hands, knowing the view from their kitchen window as they know their morning face in the mirror; the passage of years may adjust some of the settings, but the face, and the view remain the same.

How curious to me, an inquisitive nomad, though truth be told, I bop, not across the globe, but merely from state to state and back again, from one part of the same town to another; across the street once, and  another time, merely next door. Surprisingly, even that move offered its surprises, its own change of “guard”, different neighbors.  Neighbors up, neighbors down, next door, or across the way. I once had a neighbor for eight years who I never saw or met, but each evening, in the wintertime, when I brushed my teeth, I could see the light on in his house through the stripped down woods. Oddly, no matter what time I went to bed, that light was on. For me, neighbors are a unique subset. 

Neighbors play bit parts in our stage career of life. Maybe they are the lighting crew, the curtain man, the coffee gopher.  But maybe, just maybe, they are the ones we remember.  They are a distinctive category of people who appear to stroll, race walk, plow, amble, insinuate, and exist in our lives. We know they are there, like we know a thorn has nestled itself into the skin of our thumb, or as we feel the first spring breeze across our cheeks, without acknowledging its caress. Neighbors may not offer the type of kinship or camaraderie as our coworkers, who are bound by the unwritten mores of job related dealings; the ones with which we spend eight hours locked into professional combat. The ones who ask every Monday morning “How was your weekend?” (Of course my neighbor might know I never left the house all weekend) Nor do neighbors usually possess the ingredients required for the bond of friendship, though some do make that grade.  Now and then we experience an over the backyard fence type of neighbor.  More often than not, they become the reason for the fence.  In urban settings, our closest neighbors can remain strangers, with only their nine to five heels clicking intimately past our door each morning on their way to the elevator. 

This novella, therefore, I dedicate to all the neighbors who claim a spark in my memory, from my early roots in Queens, New York, on to the hills of Northwestern New Jersey, and right on up to the Hudson Valley in glorious New York State. All the names have been changed to protect the neighbors’ identities.  I hope you’ll enjoy the neighborhoods.