Neighbours

Today when coming home from a day spent in the park with a couple I just met recently, I had a sudden compulsion to introduce myself to my neighbours. There was a man mowing his lawn two doors down from me. I had never seen his face before. Two doors down. He was wearing earphones so I had to stand there awkwardly until he noticed me. I said hello, that I am just introducing myself after all this time – that it’s crazy I haven’t done so before. I asked him his name and his wife’s name, he confirmed he had two kids, both boys (I had thought boy and girl). I told him about my family and described my own situation as ‘in-betweeny’, doing those things someone in their early twenties ought to do. He said make sure to enjoy it because once you have kids “it’s all over”. We had unnatural smalltalk about living in our neighbourhood, then out of the blue he said “How long do you think we’ve been here?”.

“Five years?” I said. 

“Ten. Ten years we’ve been here.”

It came like a blow, almost felt directed as one. Pwoh. It took me ten years meet this neighbour. Someone who lives TWO DOORS down from me, in a terrace. I felt sad…

I then noticed the people who lived next door to him, three doors down from me, were coming out of their home. “I may as well take this chance to introduce myself to them!” I did. I met all four of them. The mother had her hands full with a young boy and a girl who had come outside presumably to ask her something. “Come and say hello to our neighbour” she said. It all seemed so fake and distant and unnatural, yet I was glad to be doing it. I learned the girl is to be dressing up as the Eiffel tower tomorrow night for Hallowe’en. The mother seemed too preoccupied to fully engage with me – but I also got the impression she would be like that even if her kids weren’t present. It weirdly affirmed to me the warning I had just received from the other neighbour. The mother’s husband didn’t say hello or even glance my way. He was standing on a step ladder at the edge of the garden doing something with the tree and chatting to the man who had been cutting the grass next door. That man, when I was talking to him just seconds before, had told me he didn’t know the names of that couple. It all seemed very Truman show for a minute. All of us neighbours following our neighbour scripts. Being good suburban citizens, cutting the tiny squares of grass and being polite. Yet not fully buying into any of it. Not even bothered to learn the names of the people who live right next to us.

It makes me sad.

But at least I’ve made a step. It all feels part and parcel of adulthood duty so I am glad to be taking that step. Hopefully I will build some kind of relationship with these people, however frail. Just that they know my name I suppose, would be nice.

It felt too painful to speak about this gap in my life before but at least something has been done about it now. I am guessing this is a more common story than we would like to admit. I wish it weren’t so…