Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Feeling Neighborly?

by Teresa

An Op-Ed piece in the New York Times this week talks about the concept of neighborhoods.  The author writes about what he did when he realized that he hardly knew many of his neighbors.  He went around knocking on doors and—get this—he asked some of them to have sleepovers.
Peter Lovenheim writes: “What would it take, I wondered, to penetrate the barriers between us? I thought about childhood sleepovers and the insight I used to get from waking up inside a friend’s home. Would my neighbors let me sleep over and write about their lives from inside their own houses?“ 
Click here to read the article in the NYT and find out about his experience.

I remember my family knowing virtually everyone, in every house, in my neighborhood growing up.  Of course, that was in a small town in the Midwest… not a city in the Northeast.  It was a much different place, and a much different time. In fact, many of us didn’t even knock on doors (which weren’t ever locked).  Smaller kids came over to our yard to swing on our swingset all the time.  My brother and I rode bikes with the other kids and played outside from morning ‘til night.  At trick-or-treating time, all the grown-ups knew all the children’s names. 

Things aren’t quite the same, of course, in the neighborhood where I live now.  My husband and I have lived there for several years and I’ll have to admit, we still don’t know the first names of everyone on our block.  This is partly because, well, it’s just the way things ARE, these days, I think.  And it’s partly because we both work full time, and we had two babies, so we’ve been quite busy for the past few years!

But luckily, we are good friends with our neighbors on both sides.  One family has a baby daughter who’s going to be a great playmate for my kids when she gets a little older.  The neighbor on the other side has a granddaughter who often stays with her, and she’s a great kid—my children have been playing with her for a couple of years now.  There’s even a dog at each house on either side of us—which has helped our kids learn how to behave around dogs. 
My kids’ school principal lives in our neighborhood too!  They get so excited if they see her outside, and her house was by FAR their favorite stop on trick-or-treating night.
We know some of the other neighbors well enough to stop and chat, but the neighbors on either side are really special.  We’ve shared big events with them (birthday parties, cookouts, baby showers, etc.); they’re great people, and we just enjoy having them around. 

All in all, it may not be the ideal “neighborhood” feeling of my childhood, but I feel pretty happy—and lucky—to have ended up with people we really like, so near to us.  I know many people aren’t as lucky. 
How about you?  Do you know your neighbors?  Are you friends?  Do you get along?