I’m having lots of thoughts on houses1, on gentrification, on neighbourliness and introversion, on white privilege and class privilege, on schools and lead paint and… all sorts of things. But those are all still swirling around, and I don’t have the clarity to discuss them yet.
But here’s what I did last Friday:
The Boychick fell asleep in the car, on the way home. Not being able to transfer him inside anymore without waking him up, we stayed in the car. The weather had taken its cue from a tourist guide: sunny, warm but not hot, breeze just enough to bring fresh air without bringing chill. He napped, I enjoyed the sun and breeze on my leg, stuck out the car’s rolled down window.
He woke just as our neighbours came home from their after-work walk, their one year old happily worn on his mother’s chest. He watched them walk up the hill, eyes bleary and unfocused. After they left his sight, he started talking — about them, about the baby, about wanting to go talk to them.
We got out of the car (I rolled down the leg of my jeans, rolled up the car’s window), and he talked about wanting to go see them. I checked the mail (equally divided between bills and junk, as usual), and he talked about wanting to play with them. I told him they’d gone inside (tossed the junk in the recycling, tucked the bills in my bag), and he talked about asking them to come outside. I told him they were probably busy (rolled up the other windows, got our jackets out of the back), and he talked about me calling them. I told him I didn’t have their number on my phone (I did), and he talked about how I could find it.
I hemmed, I hawed (I stalled), and he persevered.
“Well…” I said (thinking about everything I’d ever written in favor of community and real relationships and practical, tangible support, and trying to remember whether the father’s name was Brian or Ryan), “I guess we can go knock on their door and ask if they want to come out.”
“They will!” he said, and talked about what they’d do outside. “They might not,” I warned, wanting to avoid a heartbroken child (wanting my heart to stop trying to beat out of my chest). “They will!” he said, as we climbed the lawn separating our driveways.
We got there. He knocked and asked the closed door “Do you want to come outside?” (I said he should wait to ask until they answered.)
She answered the door, and was lovely, and listened to him talk about his balloon-glove. The one year old was walking (how had I not known he was walking now?), and decided for us that the plan of the day was to come outside with a ball.
My child talked, and tossed the ball downhill and retrieved it and tossed it and so on, and talked. (I tried not to tell him not to talk so much.) She talked and played with him, and we chatted. (I tried not to hyperventilate.) The Man came home, and opened the door to the garage to put his bike away. (I tried not to cringe at the catastrophically messy state it’s in.) The one year old walked out of his pants, and she said she wished she could go around without pants too. (I tried not to say anything embarrassing, and so I said nothing.)
We decided it was time to go in, and made our goodbyes; she and the baby up the hill to their house, we and our no-longer-baby up the stairs to ours.
We go inside, and I think: Is this what it is to be neighbours? Is this what it is to be in community? How do I pass on what I never learned? My kid wants to play, so I teach him how to knock on doors, though it’s the last thing I want to do; my kid wants to talk, so I teach him it’s ok to approach people, even if I’m not sure it it? Is it wrong to be so proud of this one, small (twelve-month-old-like wide-legged wobbly) step toward not being That Neighbour, Who Doesn’t Talk To Anyone? How many times am I going to fall down on my butt before this becomes second nature? And will people smile and find it cute, or will they not see how hard this is for me, how new?
We make dinner. We stay inside the rest of the night. I look at houses online and think about community.
Arwyn
In my bathroom hangs a plaque with a picture of a yin yang and the word BALANCE. I can never get it to hang straight. This probably says something deep and meaningful about my life.
My youngest used to go and knock on the neighbour’s door all the time* asking to play in the park next door with the grandkids who came to be looked after by their Aunty and Grandma when mum was at work. It made me incredibly uncomfortable because I wasn’t sure that the approach would be welcome. But it always was and the kids had such a great time together and it made me come out of the house and hang out in the park having conversations instead of being cooped up in the house all day. Yay! for community.
*In fact he’d do it even when the grandkids weren’t there, plus he’d just vanish from the house giving me a moment of panic till I confirmed that he was at the neighbours. And then there was the time he decided, aged 3, to cross the road and head off to a friend’s place down the street. I’d just come in from an unsuccessful panicked search of the cul-de-sac when she rang to say he’d turned up on her doorstep.
I’m much like you in that I’m shy and reserved around people and don’t want to go “bother the neighbors.” I love the sense of community my in-laws have– they live on a cul-de-sac and know most of the people on their street, are good friends with a couple right across from them, and they’ll sit out on one or the other’s front lawn just talking. It’s really sweet. I would love that, too, except a) there’s the shy thing, and b) we’re still so transitory. We moved into our current home, and knew we’d be renting for 2 years and then likely need to upgrade to something bigger. When there’s a timestamp on how long you’re going to be someplace, it’s harder to work up the nerve to build that community, since, well, we’re gonna leave again soon anyway, right?
Over the past 18 months I’ve discovered there are several kids D’s age on our street (2 of those families have moved away in the past couple months, which made me sad we didn’t meet them sooner). We play fairly regularly with one family, but all others it’s left to chance if we happen to see them when we’re outside playing.
I think a huge part of community is permanence, needing to be someplace you know you’ll be at for a long time. Unfortunately I don’t know when we’re gonna get that– we’re now considering a move from CA to MI for a job, with the plan semi-formed in our minds of coming back after 3-4 yrs. I don’t really know when we’re going to settle in one place for good. But, I suppose we can still try to have some sort of community and at least try to meet the neighbors wherever we go, even if only for a short while.
It’s interesting, because to me, it’s also the other way around: if I’m going to be here long term, I don’t want to risk making a BAD relationship, either. No relationship almost seems safer.
But, I also haven’t lived anywhere permanent like since I moved out of my parents’ house. This is the second longest we’ve stayed anywhere, and we’ll have been here for three years. (The longest time we spent 5 years in a place, the last 3.5 of which we were trying to figure out how to leave, so I don’t really count it.) So maybe it will be different if we ever buy somewhere, and try to make it really OURS.
Maybe I should plan on that…
We are in the process of moving right now, and will (hopefully) be moving again within the next 6 months to someplace more permanent. One of the main things we are looking for is a neighborhood with more kids so my son will be able to do exactly what the boychick did. It will certainly be an adjustment for me because I also struggle with social anxiety and am just so accustomed to living in a neighborhood where people by and large keep to themselves, and children sitings are a relative rarity. I would love for my child to have community but also struggle because I don’t really know how to create one for him. Any desire to move with the boychick to Las Vegas? We could figure it out together?!
I have huge gobs of negative desire to move to Las Vegas, because I don’t want to have to kill The Man. And I would. He undergoes a radical personality change in the heat (defined, apparently, as “over 85F”). I’m never living anywhere with him without AC, and never ever anywhere that doesn’t consider 90F+ a heat wave.
‘Course, given recent weather patterns, we may have to move to Seattle in a few years. Then maybe Canada…
I think it is great that he went and knocked! We know our neighbours enough to wave hello and chit chat with them, but none of our direct neighbours have kids. For years we didn’t know anyone near us who was our age or who had kids. Now we know two families not too far away from us. I don’t think either of them are the type of people I would have sought out as friends and there are certainly things I don’t feel comfortable talking to them about, but for the most part we get along, we have a great time, and we have a support system.
I think you’re brave. Sadly, we live in a culture where people don’t introduce themselves or create a community. I’ve often lamented that I don’t know my neighbours and I don’t know how to get to know them…just knocking on the door seems so simple! There are lots of kids in the neighbourhood, so maybe as Rachel gets older the community will grow around us. That’s what I hope will happen, but you’ve shown me that I have to DO something to make that happen.
When I was a kid most of the families on neighbouring farms were distant relatives; I used to roam freely around visiting people and probably annoying them. But it was a rural place, the biggest risk was that I’d be hurt by an electric fence, and it was ’simpler times’. We don’t know many of our neighbours here – the ones next door to us are lovely retirees. They made an effort to be friendly when we first moved here but I probably was a bit bewildered by their overtures and now wish I’d done better at forging a relationship – they’d probably be wonderful babysitters for when I have appointments or other brief things, but I have no idea about how to go about building that kind of relationship now. It’s tough, overcoming shyness and other barriers and reaching out. It’s lovely that they Boychick has helped you to do that. Who knows, maybe your neighbour is also relieved that you’ve made the first move and is looking forward to some more neighbourliness as well.
Oh, those neighbours have made the first move before — it’s the only reason I (kind of) know their names.
We’re definitely the odd ones out. But that’s ok, with the help of a gregarious 3 year old, we’re (apparently!) changing.
I don’t now that it ever does become second nature. And if we have any sensitivities at all, we’ve been through some variation of it before. Being a parent, being a neighbor isn’t easy. We tend to stick the parent thing out for the most part because we are rarely given the option not to. Would we choose differently if we could? I’d like to think not, but this is far from an easy job.
And being a neighbor is even harder, especially because in this day and gae we are not required to know our neighbors let alone associate with them. They have their world and we have ours. Does this make the world a better place? No, but it allows us to have a space that is comfortable. Not knowing that someone has problems alleviates the need to step in and help. Not getting to know them alleviates the pain that comes if you become friends and you or they must move. There are pitfalls.
But there are rewards. Friendship. Support. Help. Another set of eyes on your child at play. Someone to talk to about things, discuss things, even debate things. An adult. How often I’ve heard fellow parents berate the fact that they don’t get to have ‘adult’ conversations, but asked they also say they don’t know who their neighbors are. We have choices. And no, it’s not at all easy. Life is messy.
Hi Arwyn, I’m extroverted and my son has picked that up too. Sounds like your son has as well. (Yay for extroverted people!) My son LOVES to play with our neighbors. When I pull in our driveway after daycare… if he sees the neighbors he begs to play with them. I have taught him to ask if they can play. It only took a few times where we walk over and they are about to go inside or by the time I unbuckle for him to learn that sometimes people can play and sometimes they cannot. He might be disappointed but I always remind him “maybe tomorrow!” and he just sails on. Like I said, I understand that because I’m a extrovert and an out-going person. So really, maybe your son is, too!
I think it’s very brave of you to tag along with him, if it is not your comfort zone. Maybe you’d be better off enrolling him in a class or something where he can play with others and you don’t have to socialize because you are sitting in the waiting room?
I can understand your fear that you don’t want to start a BAD relationship with anyone ‘odd’. But in this case, you have slowly developed a feel for these folks and I think it seems like you have a ‘green light’ they can be yard-friends where you stand in the yard with small talk and the kids play.
I’m so with you on this! Luckily, my two neighbors across the street (each with a little boy a year and 18 mos younger than my son) are VERY gregarious and they’ve slowly broken down my shyness barriers. It’s also helped that my backyard is a freakin’ disaster and so I spend most of my time in the front yard pushing H in the swing. I guess southerners take that as an invitation to come on over!
But knocking on a door like you did?? Holy conniption fit, Batman! You deserve the biggest, fattest gold star EVER for that.
Way to go! I have to admit, I have had similar conversations with my daughter, but I have not had the courage to meet her requests. In spite of the fact that I share similar views as you on community. I think that sounds like an excellent first step.
My son calls our annoying neighbors “my friends!” Friends with an exclamation point. He talks to them, he plays with them, he seeks them out.
I’d rather be annoyed by them.
A lesson to be learned from my little boy.
What a great story! I hope my child can teach me to be neighbors, too. I’m always just scared we’re annoying everybody.
We only have one neighbour – there’s a vacant block on the other side of our house, which appears to be frequented by broken down cars and high school truants but not anyone else. I was pretty reserved at first, because lets face it, there are so many times when I don’t want to have to be social. But we’re on very friendly terms now and I feel a lot of safety in that there is a friendly face just over the fence if I need anything.
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