Neighbourly

We have new neighbours: a mother, her daughter and son, and their very big black dog who likes to bark loudly whenever anyone comes within his vision, which is often, seeing as they too live along the bike path in the back. I have yet to see or hear a father (and as everyone else makes themselves heard through the concrete wall on a daily basis, I'm inclined to think there isn't one). The daughter is somewhere around nine, I think; and the son about two years younger, both thin as cables.

Much of the shouting seems to be about homework. It has to be done inside; it has to be done at certain specified times; this is enforced, loudly, at least once each day. There is also much shouting at the dog, who likes to charge out the back door given any opportunity and then refuse to come to his name no matter how noisily given, his tail wagging. "Bad dog! M! Come here! Bad dog! Now!" they scream. M wags. They bluster and holler and wave their arms. M wags, and runs a bit farther away. It's a good thing he's a friendly dog because he's in our yard a lot.

"That M is a bad dog," Frances will say. "He doesn't come."

I haven't met their mother yet, though I hope to. I also hope she doesn't yell at me. (I'm sure she won't, it's just all I've heard her do so far.)

On my sick day earlier this week, I was not feeling up to making Frances dinner. I was also feeling guilty. I've been self-absorbed at home lately and not spending as much time interacting with Frances in the evenings as I normally would, or as I think she needs; it was mostly unavoidable but that doesn't mean that Frances likes it, of course. So I decided to make a new start and tell her that we'd be spending more active playtime together in the evenings over a cheeseburger and french fries.

We picked up dinner on our way home from school (and I also finally found a backpack small enough for her--it's Hello Kitty but it's blue and sparkly and tiny and she loves it, and is proud as punch to be having her own backpack, and when she woke up the next morning she could hardly wait to go to school and show it off. Plus, it was cheap) and decided that we would eat al fresco, in our yard area out back, since it was such a lovely day. I spread out our junk food on Frances's tiny picnic table, pulled up a small chair for her and a big one for me, and we dug in.

I don't think we'd been out there for even five minutes before C and our new neighbour kids (the daughter I can call A; the son's name I don't know) were there, too, talking about what they like to eat and what kinds of toys they like and where they went to school and who their teachers were and what they were like and their favourite colours (everything except the boy's name, I think). Frances chatted away too between dipping her french fries in ketchup and talking about how big her cheeseburger was (and it was, considering the size of Frances's hands).

This might sound like a strange thing to say about being interrupted in the middle of dinner, but it was nice. In all of my years living in suburbs and eating dinner on the back deck or patio, I can't say that neighbour children have ever scaled the back fence to congregate around shared childhood interests and make friends with my daughter. It's one of the things we all say we miss about the way communities used to be, isn't it? When people are outside where we live now, they're not alone for long.

Which isn't to say that I don't occasionally long for more privacy; say, when C comes knocking on the living room window to find out if Frances is home, and tries to peek around the blinds, and I am sitting on the couch in my pyjamas trying to write. I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to do a bit of gardening out back to at least reduce the visibility into my living space from the bike path as an alternative to keeping the blinds perpetually drawn. We'll see.

In the meantime, Frances can make friends just by going out the back door and playing with a stick in the dirt while I either read in a patio chair or tidy up and watch her through the window. It's a strange bit of nostalgia in the middle of a big city that's mostly let that kind of thing go.

If only M would stop barking.

Posted by Andrea at May 15, 2008 8:54 AM under Friends and Others

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