The best part about buying our first house 26 years ago was discovering that we now lived in a real neighbourhood.
We were the first family with young children to move into our road in some years. Our neighbours were such a mixed bunch age wise, gay and straight, with or without children. My two sons and I each made friends who were considerably older than us, but oh were they great friendships. We all learned so much from the generous hearts those people had.
As time went by other families had children so there were younger playmates for pickup basketball or going on the swings. But our older friends gave us riches beyond our dreams. My oldest son’s friend fostered our sons’ interest in computers, he loaned us computers and was constantly upgrading what we had. I used to tell him he was spoiling my sons. He simply said “I have no one else to spoilâ€. He also had an abiding interest in WWII airplanes, another of my oldest son’s passions.
Our next door neighbour became my youngest son’s very best friend – they were probably 50 years apart in age, but they shared a common interest in lawnmowers and household projects! We would hear Stan’s garage door open and my son would say “Can I go to Stan’s?†The original deck they built with a crowd of Stan’s friends has just been rebuilt by the current owners (my son was simply happy to hold all the nails Stan and his buddies needed — none of them even hinted that he was too young to be there at age 4 or 5).
My friend Rose was in her 80’s when we moved in. She lived across the road and was delighted to meet someone from ‘the old country’. She had emigrated from England with her family when she was only 13. We reminisced about our favourite foods and she talked about the village where she grew up, not so far from my hometown.
She would readily sit with my sleeping youngest son while I nipped out to pick up the oldest from his first (and only) year at school. We didn’t call it babysitting back then, no money was exchanged either. If my young son woke up she quietly said “Mum will be back in a minute†and he was completely calm.
Some years after she died I made a trip to her village in southeast England and it was almost exactly as she described it to me – even the village green and the school hadn’t changed from how it was in the early 1900’s. A very emotional experience; I mourned her and smiled at the same time.
Fast forward 26 years and to a discussion with my husband this morning. We could only name one neighbour who has been a helpmate in recent times of need. Our old friends have long since died.
Most of our neighbours hibernate in their houses, remodeling, or planning their move to their next ‘neighbourhood’. It really doesn’t matter where those people live. They go about their lives bearing no relationship to their neighbours or even their own outdoor areas.
They leap in their cars and go off to work, school or their children’s activities.
My city has suggested a moratorium on the building of McMansions in neighbourhoods like ours with existing smaller scale homes. It’s really not just the McMansions. It’s the fact that those properties are identical in almost every way, the new houses are simply clones of those built in other parts of the city. If more imagination was put into their designs we might not be thinking about a moratorium.
It’s a chicken and egg thing as to why so many women feel they must work while their children are at a tender age. I can see how lonesome they would feel being the only mother at home with no sense of living in a ‘real’ neighbourhood.
The thing is, if those staying at home went out of their way to interact with their neighbours simply because it’s a pleasant thing to do – not as my neighbour did recently, asking everyone if they wanted to sell their homes; in fact trying to solicit such sales by taking meals to one elderly neighbour!!! (She didn’t take the bait so the meals stopped!) – then they might not feel as alienated from those around them.
I realize how very lucky I was to move into a real neighbourhood where people cut their own grass and tended their own plants – how we all used to stand around and talk a couple of times a week. It gave my sons a sense of whose house was safe – in fact every house was a safe house in those days.
I think most people now living here with their young children have little or no sense of who their neighbours are.
If friendship with us is only based on what can be materially gained from us it’s no wonder such people don’t feel part of their neighbourhood and are ready to move on.
Neighbourhoods still matter and are still around, you just have to make a conscious contribution – it used to be called altruism!!