Can't Choose Your Neighbors

We've had an exceptionally close relationship with neighbors on one side of us, Laura and her daughters.  We've celebrated Thanksgiving with them, and for years the girls adopted my Christmas tree.  Jerry and I have flown to their college graduations on the East Coast.  I spoke at their bat mitzvahs.

 Celebrating Leah's graduation from Tufts in 2013

Neighbors on other side have been problematic. First, there was a single lawyer who turned the place into a boarding house.  We hardly ever spoke to him, because he was rarely home.

Ten years ago, he sold his house to a family of five with young children.

This has not been a happy relationship.  I won't go into the details, but the easiest route seemed to be not to speak.  It's been difficult and unsettling.

A couple of years ago, this family moved across the country and rented their house to another family of five, who were quiet and delightful.  My shoulders dropped.  I opened windows I'd kept shut, literally and metaphorically.  I left the shutters open all day.

This week, the renter-family moved out, and the owners returned.  Their presence felt HUGE, like this:

 Actually, their house is no bigger than anyone else's

There was unpleasantness over the state of the house and the renters' security deposit.   Neighbors have taken sides. Some aren't speaking to each other. 

The owner-family is loud, and I'm constantly opening and closing the windows in my studio, depending on their volume.

 Closed window and drawn shade in my studio

I think about my mom and the kind of friendships she made with neighbors in our San Jose housing tract in the fifties and sixties. Virtually all of the women were housewives with children in the same school that my sister and I went to.  They gossiped.  They borrowed from each other.  They lent each other maternity clothes.  They commiserated. 

My mom didn't like every single one of them, especially the "trollop" in short-shorts who petitioned against fair housing.  My mother slammed the door in her face.  But generally it was copacetic.  The trollop lived on another block.

Obviously, I'm not going to move because of this tension.  I tried drawing the neighbors' house more to scale to see if that would help:

 It did, a little.   But my house still feels like less of a refuge.