Penny Post #19: Neighbors
They’re the people you live closest to, yet also the people you might know the least.
Rhiannon, my closest neighbor, held a mug that matched her electric pink hair when she approached my door. She introduced herself and welcomed me to the apartment complex. I thanked her for her kindness & silently wondered if she had ever listened to Fleetwood Mac.
I had a sneaking suspicion that maybe her parents had…
ENTER Patsy. Rhiannon’s mom who happened to live just below us. Oh, was Patsy a delight. She gave me tips on our shared laundry room, sympathized with me about the continued writer’s strike, and offered an inside joke about what it’s like to work in healthcare.
Then there’s Lynus. Rhiannon’s son and Patsy’s grandson who lives with Rhiannon yet has just returned from a month and a half away. I haven’t yet met him, but his sixteen-year-old schedule likely conflicts with mine.
I felt so welcomed by this little family of neighbors that the next day I may or may not have peeked into Patsy’s apartment, made awkward eye contact, and waved. Clearly, I’m still trying to figure out appropriate neighborly conduct…
Living next to people is different than living with them and yet you share the same walls and floors and ceilings and staircases and garbage bins. I’ve mistakenly approximated these people - of which I only know their first names - as family.
I embarrassingly admit that I even dreamt of us sharing Thanksgiving dinner together. [Side note: I hope they like stuffing.]
This is perhaps a symptom of homesickness yet is also a testament to the strangeness of neighbors. It also reminds me of this brilliant short film that won an Oscar several years ago:
You can see inside their world and maybe or maybe not understand it and with an odd voyeuristic sense and a desire for connection, you are suddenly neighbors. Not quite friends, you hope to God not enemies, just neighbors. It is a weird social contract: we are going to live (and by live I mean have everything good or bad or somewhere in between happen to us) and we are not going to acknowledge that life is lived fully or not at all or somewhere in between right behind this wall.
There is an odd sense of metaphorical distance in neighborly relationships. I’ll be friendly, but I don’t want to get too close just in case. It is a distance that directly contradicts the closeness of our front doors. Close but not close. Distant yet not really distant. Home yet not quite home.
From someone who is exploring privacy while sharing all of her thoughts with strangers on the Internet,
Kiera