Neighbors

I have a vision of my ideal neighborhood that I doubt will ever be realized. I dream that our house is surrounded by quiet families with similarly aged children, all of whom are respectful and kind and not in 1,001 activities. I dream of calling them up and asking for a cup of flour...because we all know how much I bake and need said flour. I envision our kids playing outside together while we drink brewskies and chat in the driveways. Even though I hate beer.



Anyway, I pretty much have an unrealistic wish list for my neighbors. I am actually quite lucky with my neighbors. Here is a model of our nearest neighbors:





curve of street...no houses a___ b___ c ...


________________street_________________________


community open space/ US!___ d___ e ...
sled riding hill




Okay, so here's a run-down of the neighbors...

a= Couple about my parents' ages. Husband is a township administrator...like my dad. They have one son who is 9 or 10 and goes to a very $$$ private school. Nice people...who have a lot more in common with my parents than us.

b= Very nice Russian couple. Have 2 college age boys. They are never outside...we only wave when they drive home from work and check their mail.

c= Super wonderful young couple with 2 boys right around Lily's age. Both work full time with a 45 minute commute, so we rarely see them. But enjoy their company when we do see them.

d= Very quiet Asian couple in their 60s who don't seem to speak English very well. They told us not to worry about Shadow coming in their yard when we first moved in. At least I think that's what they said. ;) We see them so infrequently that when I was out pushing the kids in the swings last summer, the wife commented, "Oh! You had a 3rd child!" Michael was 15 months at the time.

e= A family in California bought this home as their vacation home. Their families live in NJ, and they come to visit each summer for a few weeks. Otherwise it stands vacant.


So we are lucky in that everyone is quiet, takes care of their houses, and is polite. But we certainly don't have relationships with these people.

Which is why it was so nice for our next door neighbors to shovel our sidewalk with their snow blower after each major snow storm this winter. We certainly didn't expect it and we appreciated the 20-30 minutes it saved us in shoveling. I decided this weekend to make a loaf of banana nut bread for them and write a little thank you note. Andrew was desperate to deliver it...by himself.

I coached him on what to say, because he tends to go on and on, and I worried that if their English is shaky it would really be confusing. Heck, I'M confused half the time when he starts off on a tangent. So we rehearsed that he should tell them his name and that he lived next door (in case they didn't recognize him) and that his mom wanted to give them this. That's it.

Andrew went over yesterday and came back empty-handed...success! Here's our conversation:

A- I gave it to them, and you were wrong, Mom, they speak English really good.

G- Great! Did you say what we practiced?

A- Yeah, and a little bit more. I told them I was Andrew and I am 6 and I have a little brother that is 1 but almost two because his birthday is in April and a sister who is 3 but she won't eat banana bread because she is really picky and that this was really yummy banana bread for them because they shoveled our sidewalk and we were really thankful so we made them this yummy bread so they could eat it and enjoy it and that you wrote a note saying all those things and maybe tomorrow you were going to make ME some of that yummy bread. And then he said thank you and smiled and closed the door, so see? He DOES speak English and understood everything I said.


I have a feeling if I just let Andrew loose in the neigborhood, we'd soon know everybody really well. Or at least they'd know enough about us to avoid us intentionally. :)