Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

A friend sent me this link to a NYT article on the state of the American “neighborhood.” She suggested I use it as a starting point for my next blog, and indeed, I will do just that. The article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/opinion/23lovenheim.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=12d212b312060fc1&ex=1214884800&emc=eta1

Instead of making me long for some warm neighbors (mine don’t say “hello”), from whom I’d be able to borrow a cup of sugar and to whom I’d gladly give a few eggs should they need some for baking cookies, some of which to be shared with me over pleasantries, this essay made me remember some of the neighbors I’ve had in the past.

I grew up in a standard building in Russia, where hundreds of small apartments are still inhabited by people grateful not to share living quarters with strangers (for further explanation and illustration of communal living, visit this great website: http://kommunalka.colgate.edu/ Each floor of each section of the building has four apartments. #9 is ours.

#10: Occupied by Luda – 2 degrees: chemistry and foreign language, intellectual, reads books; her husband (don’t remember his name, let’s say Sasha), also educated, probably in foreign language; and Sasha Jr, a supposedly beautiful delinquent and drug addict who is drafted for service in the army as he is not pursuing higher education. Luda drinks heavily and tries to hang herself periodically. When Luda hangs herself, the neighbor from #12 rings our doorbell in panic so that she and my mom or dad can try to break in and take measures.

#11: Nina, an old maid in her 50s. Nina is from a village; she is street-smart and nosy. Sometimes she babysits my brother; once brought her niece’s son over. While she was watching my brother, her nine-year-old relative was trying to convince me to “show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

#12: A blue collar family; work at the watch factory.

#13 (4th floor, directly above our apt): My best friend in the neighborhood. Her mom, who eats sunflower seeds around the clock and reads mystery novels. Many years after we move, my friend confesses to putting a glass against the floor and listening in on my mother yelling at me. She was rooting for me. Many years after we move, my parents tell me about the late night drunken fights between my friend’s parents. No glass necessary.

#17 (5th floor): A couple with two boys, one a year older than me, the other a year older than my brother. She is a doctor, he is not (don’t recall his occupation, something in a puppet theater, not a puppeteer). She frequently visits our apartment for smoke breaks; at home, she has a baby and doesn’t want to subject him to second hand smoke. In our apartment, there is also a baby, but who can resist lighting up while defrosting her meat in our microwave oven? Her elder son, an accomplished hooligan at a tender age of 11, draws a big heart on the snow and tells me he loves me. The next day, he says he changed his mind, he loves Tanya from his class. He is the one to tell me there is no Santa; the medical kit I dreamt of and found under the tree was procured by his mother. I pretend to know that. He is also the one to break the news to me that my mom is pregnant. I pretend to know that too. Through a grapevine, I heard that he recently got out of prison in Chicago. His mom, the doctor, looked up my parents in the White Pages and called to say "hello" and share what a gifted flutist her younger son had become; no mention of the other gifted son.