Your neighbors know more about you than you realize. This was brought home to me rather strikingly when my husband ran away from home, leaving me with two kids, a house, some pets, and a really big yard I don't have time or energy for. It seems to me you can tell a lot about your neighbors by looking at their yard.
Some people are yard people, considering their lawn to be a reflection of themselves. Some people are not, and couldn’t care less as long as there is something covering the dirt. Some people love bushes, other people love flowers, and then there are those who pour their heart and financial net worth into a full landscaping of their entire lawn. Some neighbors spend more time on their yard than they do on their full time jobs, and then there are neighbors who seem to feel, like I do, that as long as it's green and alive, that's close enough. I realize that I have plenty of neighbors who disagree with me, perhaps especially the ones living on either side, but from a distance, it all looks green to me, and that is close enough for now.
I have one neighbor who has a carpet of grass, mostly uninterrupted by foliage of any kind. He is out there day and night in his non-working hours, primping, feeding, clipping, watering; all so he can do it again next weekend. I am baffled by his devotion, but fervently support his right to have a hobby. I also appreciate the lowering of my own watering bill to almost nothing, since he is uphill from me, and I get the residual benefits of his obsession.
Years ago I had a neighbor who went the other direction. She thought having a grass free yard was an achievable goal, and acted on that belief with stern efficiency. She Round-ed Up her lawn bit by bit, a stealthy vegetation serial killer, replacing the grass with rocks, trees, bushes, and finally, a really big deck. She still had to fight the battle, because grass is a persistent weed, and it was constantly encroaching on her non-green space. But she kept her Round Up handy and she got rid of her lawn mower, which is a lot better for the environment. Not to mention her back.
Neighbors generally know more about your day-to-day life than most of your own relatives, and yet, they may hardly know you at all. That leads to some odd situations, especially when you run into them at the grocery store or the movies or somewhere else out and about. The neighbor behind me has seen me in my sleep attire more than my regular clothing, since we usually set eyes on each other only when doing yard work or letting the dogs out in the morning. She probably wouldn't know me if I wasn't dirty and my hair wasn't a mess. I ran into another neighbor at a local event awhile back, and she didn't recognize me at first with hair combed and makeup applied. I would have been embarrassed, but I didn't recognize her, either.
I have neighbors that I know only from watching them through the window as they drive by, and others that I can wave to, but don’t even know their names. I have watched children learn to drive without realizing they were old enough to ride their bikes unsupervised, others left for college when I didn’t even know they were through high school. I have been blessed with truly wonderful neighbors over the years, and really don't have a bad neighbor story to share. I know how fortunate I am, because living with bad neighbors is like having a wound that will not heal. You can't forget about it, you can't cure it, and you can't get rid of it. It's just there, all the time, constantly irritating you, until one of you moves. Or has a nervous breakdown.
I have friends that were plagued by bad neighbors for many years. They would try to go into their backyard, only to hear arrows plugging the fence behind them. They would spot the kids spying on them from the trees, and they would see a woman’s face peering out the upstairs window watching them every time they went out to use their pool. They were barely able to enjoy their back yard, because every time they were out there, somehow, they would be disturbed by their neighbors.
When their bad neighbors finally moved a few years ago, it was like their back yard was a different place. They were finally free to go out and use their own space without the fear of what might happen next door.
I have had some pretty funny neighbors over the years. One couple, somewhat older than me, turned out to be a surprising delight. When we first moved in, we realized that we were across the street from a middle aged couple with no kids at home. She worked, but he was at home, and appeared to be a guy who spent his life worshipping his yard. I thought it was going to be a tough row to hoe (see how I work in topical humor) living across the street from them, but they turned out to be two great people with some funny quirks.
While he loved pets, she didn’t want anything to do with them. It worked out okay, because he would come and take care of our pets, especially our cat, when we were out of town. That way he got his cat “fix” without having his wife try to fix him. Overall, that was a great system, at least until the Incident of the Unfortunate Gerbil.
We were out of town on vacation, and he came over to feed and water the cat, the bird, and the gerbils. Sadly, the cage did not get fully closed somehow, and the cat had a better meal than usual. Which was surprising in and of itself, since that cat was so fat we didn’t think she could move fast enough to do any damage.
We were wrong. Poor Joe. He was distraught, as he tried to figure out how to handle the missing gerbil, eventually coming to the conclusion, after being fully excoriated by his disgusted wife, that he was going to just have to come clean and own up. Not only that, but he purchased for the distraught young owner an additional pair of replacement gerbils, since you can’t buy a new one and just throw it in with the old ones. Gerbils do not play well with others that weren’t born into the same litter, and we weren’t wanting any more accidents.
This would have been an ideal outcome, if only we had not had that cat. She was the creative one. She jumped up and banged that gerbil cage until a piece of it fell on the floor. Thus, leading to yet another Unfortunate Incident. I am surprised they even allowed us back in the pet store after that, frankly. Obviously, automatic hinges went on the doors at that point, so there were no more unfortunate incidents, and the remaining rodents lived far longer than any rodent has a right to. Although Joe never wanted to take care of the gerbils again.
Another funny story... well, no. I probably better let that go. I would like to remain friends with them
The delightful pair have moved since, and we still miss them in the neighborhood. They were unique and irreplaceable. Come back!
Sometimes neighbors become your "in town" family, people who take the place of the family that live somewhere else far away. We are blessed to have a family across the street as our in town family. Even when we are so busy we rarely see each other, we are always there, and we know that we can count on each other in any situation. Their children have grown up in our house, and my children have grown up in theirs. Even as adults, my children know they can turn to them for anything if they need to, because they are family, even as they are friends.
I will never forget the first day I met the daughter of the household. She was across the street, beautiful and blonde and little, wearing a sweet little dress, and looking so frilly and feminine. About the first fact I ever knew about her was that she loved the Little Mermaid, and the second was that she had new panties with Ariel’s picture on them. She even showed me, because she was so excited about it. Once you have exchanged underwear information, there isn’t much left to hide.
Neighbors see your life through an unfiltered lens. They see the blemishes and the flaws more clearly than the polished façade you present to the rest of the world. You may be surprised to learn that your neighbors know about your marital problems, your teenager’s misbehavior, your struggles with your elementary school bus rider, or your infertility. They know when you are out of work or when you buy a new car. They see when you are installing new carpeting, and they know when your pet dies. Everything that you think is hidden and personal and private is out in the open to the people who live next door to you, or across the street, with a full view of your comings and goings.
I always knew in the back of my mind that my neighbors probably saw more than I wanted, but it wasn’t until Mr. AWOL disappeared that I really understood the depth of that reality. I don’t think a single person in my neighborhood was surprised to learn that he had left except me, and one and all opined that I was better off without him here. I was shocked to learn how much they knew about my life, despite never having shared it with anyone. But they were able to support me in ways that other people couldn’t, because they understood my reality better.
Although everyone has their own family issues, and not all neighbors are best friends, many of us have things in common. I don’t know if similar families find themselves in a neighborhood, or if there is something inherent in the neighborhood that draws a specific kind of person to it. But it seems that neighborhoods have their character and make-up, and it’s interesting how many other people that live around you have rather significant life situations that are similar to your own.
For example, in our neighborhood, we are all dog owners. I don’t know what dogs say about their owners, but we have some real personalities around our house. Before we had a dog, my daughter would fume because everyone else had a dog, and we were left out of the club. Once we had a dog, it gave us an opening for conversations with total strangers at the drop of a leash.
One odd thing about dog owners is the size divide amongst them. You have your big dog owners and you have your small dog owners. In our neighborhood, most of us are small dog owners. We have a Yorkie next door who weighs all of three pounds, although she can still be ruthless, as a few dumb bunnies have learned to their loss. We have Westie Poo and Shi Tzu on the other side, a retriever across the way, and a mini pin behind us.
The dogs all have their own personalities, and their own ways of expressing themselves, and their owners all have different ways of dealing with them. Some of them are barkers, and some of them never utter a sound. Some of them are very playful, and some of them patrol their yards like they are the secret service protecting the president. Some of them barely get on the grass, while others can’t wait to barrel out their back door. Don’t even get me started on their owners.
Walking your dog is a great way to meet your fellow dog owning neighbors. I think, as a general rule, that people who own dogs are more likely to stop and talk, perhaps because you have that obvious connection in common. You compare notes on feeding and walking and barking style, and it gives you a reason to find out about their families as well. There is no question that I am more likely to know my dog owning neighbors, because I have seen them out and about with their dogs while I am out walking mine.
Neighbors are the people you turn to in the middle of the night when you are in labor, when you need an ingredient that you have run out of, when you are in your yard and just want to chat. It’s a unique and special relationship, one that brings something special into the equation. And if you are feeling neighborly, you could always call a neighbor and have coffee. Think about it.
