Neighbors

My daughter just moved. I don't know how her new neighbors are, but she really disliked the ones who lived next to her on one side at the other apartment. They were loud when the baby was sleeping, made rude comments to her when she came in late after going to the gym (her only time to work out) and left cigarette butts on the ground and dog poop in the grass where her son liked to play. Their bedroom is adjacent to the neighbor's. They could hear them "recreate" all night sometimes. How gross is that?
I hope she has better ones now. She lives on the ground floor like last time, and I hope they are more insulated. You could hear the woman's high heels walk across the floor all the time.

Neighbors can be hard. That is why I would like to live WAY out in the country away from 8 barking dogs on one side, away from a nosy one on the other side who uses his very large flashlight to see if we are home. Away from the one two blocks from here who decides to play his drum and his friend the electric guitar for up to two hours right during our dinner hour, so we really don't want to sit out on the patio to eat, besides the stupid dog on the other side, there is no peace. Away from the train that honks four very LONG blasts in the middle of the night (really the train engineers are my neighbors as well). Away from the large trucks who use our street to get to Main Street and shift up four gears just as they progress away from the stop sign on the corner, so when we talk, we have to cease for a minute to be able to hear one another.

I do have one I LOVE. Sister R, across the street, is around my mom's age. She is so wise. I love visiting her and philosophizing with her. She is amazing to me and I want to keep her around forever. I want to be just like her when I grow up.

Whenever we get the old Sunday School lesson on "who is your neighbor", I always feel guilty. I think, at heart, I am really a country girl, even though when we moved to the farm I cried for months every time I went out to the clothes line and hung diapers. We had just left a four-duplex neighborhood of young parents. Anytime I felt lonely, I would wash a batch of diapers and go outside to hang them. There was always someone in one of the other back yards hanging their diapers.

But I learned to love the quiet. I loved the darkness of the night with no lights but the stars. As Roon Dimik said in Big Business, "the only thing crowded was the sky studded with stars." I could actually see the Milky Way every night there. I was afraid of skunks, but that was about it.
I haven't seen stars very much since we moved to the neighborhood. Too many street lights.

I just got back from a short vacation to see my mom and children. Mom's house is located on 18 acres. She has neighbors, but they are fairly far away. Tonight after we unloaded our car, there to greet me, when I checked the mailbox, was a stupid dog barking at me. *sigh* I didn't miss him at all.

~a