Tikkabik

Our next door neighbors are moving today, judging from the giant moving van that's now parked outside their house. They put their house on the market earlier this summer after doing extensive renovations, and managed to find a buyer quite quickly -- it was a matter of weeks before a "sale pending" insert went up on the real estate agent's sign on the lawn. The house listed for $329K and I'll be interested to see what she got for it -- it's got a two car garage, which we don't have, and a brand new kitchen, but an unfinished bathroom upstairs.

We live in a very typical Cape suburb -- lots are about one third of an acre each, on average, with a nice mixture of two, three and four-bedroom houses of varied architectural styles. It's a mixture of young and old familes. Some retirees, many families with kids in high school or middle school, some families with kids the age of ours or younger. So it's a fairly densely populated neighborhood where you can see your neighbors out the windows, but they're far enough away that they're out of mind most of the time -- unless they're doing something inconsiderate like blasting Fleetwood Mac while doing yardwork.

In every neighborhood it seems like there's at least one person who is the nexus of information for the whole community; the repository of gossip and trivia who knows everything about his or her neighbors' comings and goings. Bonnie and I are not that couple, never have been and never will be. We'll have been here three years by this Thanksgiving, and it occurs to me as these neighbors are moving out that we've never gotten to know them. I don't even know their first names, just the surname, and that's because of the junk-mail that's occasionally mis-delivered to our house.

I've waved at them when we're in our front yards at the same time; the kids have gotten candy from them at Hallowe'en; I've nodded and exchanged pleasantries with them as I've been walking through the neighborhood; even waved at them from our porch in the back yard, as we can see onto their porch as well. But we've never gotten to *know* them. Part of the problem was just very different lifestyles -- the home owner is a divorcee and a busy professional, with kids who are much older than ours. It didn't seem that we really had anything in common. And by the time it started to bother me a bit that we didn't know them, an uncomfortably long period of time had passed -- enough that I didn't feel comfortable penetrating that barrier.

Meanwhile, the neighbors on our other side are much more accessible, though, paradoxically, we don't really have a lot in common with them, either. We know them all by name; we've been to their house for parties and we've had them over for dinner; our kids have played fetch with their dog and get presents from them at Christmas. Then again, they've been more friendly and welcoming from the start, which obviously made a big difference -- especially when we were new to the neighborhood. I'm not saying that I expected everyone in the neighborhood to show up with a bundt cake and a hearty, "Hello new neighbor," but making an effort to cross over the bushes and shake your neighbor's hand goes a long way to making someone new feel welcome and settled -- and as far as I'm concerned, it's the responsibility of those who are already there to introduce themselves to the new people.

So, with the neighbors moving out, the discomfort of breaching whatever psychic barrier it is that's prevented us from getting to know each other is dissipating. Here's to hoping the next neighbors and we make more of an effort to be friendly. This time, though, we're the veterans, so the first step will be ours. Where'd I leave the bundt pan?