Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I suppose it started for me when we moved into our first real house as a married couple. I feel silly admitting it, but I sort of expected people to show up at our door with baked goods, welcoming us to the neighborhood and introducing themselves. Days went by before I realized that not only was I not going to be visited by the welcome wagon, but people would go out of their way to pretend that they hadn't noticed that anyone had moved in. A year later, my naive self thought: "Surely the birth of our baby will bring out those neighborly instincts!" Luckily in my alternating panic, stupor, and adoration after Sprout's birth, I didn't notice the complete absence of neighborhood visitors nor the distinct lack of casseroles. Our church was very supportive when Sprout had his surgery. A woman delivered some mums leftover from a harvest service, and another asked me to drive the 20 minutes to her place to pick up some chili she'd made for us. Gaia bless the Unitarians.

When we moved to our new home, I saw the chance to make it the neighborhood I dreamed of. We set up for trick-or-treat the day after moving into our home, but few candy-beggars visited. A month later at Christmas time, I baked cookies and Beo and I delivered them to the neighbors, introducing ourselves since only our next-door neighbors had introduced themselves to us. Mostly we got looks of confusion and muttered thanks. The neighbors we knew gave us some of her own cookies a couple of days later. Reciprocity, I suppose. Was it that no one expects those kind of neighborly gifts and longer? Is it that people don't want to feel indebted to someone? Is it simply an overvaluation of privacy? After the second horrified look of a new neighbor presented with a load of fresh baked bread, I gave up. I stopped saying "Hello" when walking neighbors pretended not to hear me--or even crossed to the other side of the street. I stopped waving then every driver looked the other way--or worse, stared at me impassively. If they didn't want to be my friends, well I didn't want to be their friends either. So there.

I had settled into this frame of mind nicely. After all, we don't even have a "Neighborhood Association". It's a "Homeowner's Association". My neighbor-free life was broken only by pleasant surprises from our next door neighbors. One, a seamstress, asked if she could make Bird a Christmas Dress. Another, a pastor, offers us gifts of extra food from his church, and once even a jar of Apple Butter ("No preservatives or anything, and all of that natural stuff!" Gods bless him, too.) to thank us for sharing some excess produces. I neighbor them right back with pesto kits from the garden (complete with pine nut baggies!) and heirloom veggies (complete with history and recipe suggestions!).

My reverie of non-neighborness was broken by a conversation with my Dad. They're considering getting a play system for the kids, and my Dad asked if anyone else in our subdivsion had a play system yet. When we told him that we'd be the first, he said he thought we'd be surprised at how many friends we suddenly discovered when our play system was installed. I was a bit taken aback. Would people really bring their kids to our backyard? Did I want them to? The next week on an early morning run I spotted a play system like the model we'd been considering. It was one subdivision over. As I rounded the cul de sac, I realized that the house right across from them had a similar system, and there was a third right next door. They were all neatly fenced into their own spacious yards. I began to wonder if this lack of neighborliness had it's drawbacks after all. The following week in a more tighly packed rural suburb, I saw 3 play systems in adjoining yards. Back to back. I doubt they were even the reccomended distance apart from foreign objects. I felt tears spring to my eyes. What's more, we were on our way to an incredible neighborhood playground--just 2 blocks away.

This week on a flight to Pittsburgh I prepared myself to enjoy the bird's eye view of the country as we descended. Instead of pure amazement, I was shocked to see the rows of swimming pools that lined the backyards of the suburbs with matching houses. What about that 5th house--the one that broke the perfect line of pools? Even the smaller neighborhoods, obviously lower (middle) class even from the air, were dotted with splotches of blue. (It was very easy to find an example.) What's the point of all this chlorine?

So far I've seen our lack of neighborliness isolating our children, isolating adults, creating akwardness, and driving excess. Is there anything else? In a recent article in Plenty, the author cited two studies which seem to point to our lack of social contact as one of the key factors in our skyrocketing anxiety rates. Now not every neighborhood has fallen to this depressing phenomenon. Our good friends live in a neighborhood where neighborhood barbecues, babysitting co-ops, and even group dates are the norm. They seem to be an exception to an ever-expanding rule though. The organization I direct has a mission, which I wrote: "Neighbors Serving Neighbors in Need". We call our services of visits, rides to the doctor's office, help with grocery shopping "neighborly-type" services. The only issue is that we have to recruit and import the neighbors to help them. Let me tell you from experience: A lot of folks out there could use a good neighbor. Our program and others like it only see a growth in demand.

Do Sprout and Bird see any parity between the lively neighbors of Sesame Street and our own? Do they ever envy (as I do) Mr. Rogers' friends, delivery men, and mayor popping in to say hello and have a visit? Maybe that kind of neighborhood is as imaginary to them as Dora and Calliou's neighborhood. Maybe they don't even know that they used to really exist. Maybe the don't realize that they still can. I'm reversing my stance on the acceptance of my non-neighborly neighborhood. I'm going to be knocking on doors again this year, armed with christmas cookies. We'll make this neighborhood a community yet.