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.
