NIMBY

What to do? The last family that lived next door to us was a tough act to follow: demographically our match, children the same age, similar value systems, and they had the added virtue of putting up with us.

(Yeah. Right up until they moved.)

And D and I know it's wrong to feel betrayed by them for selling their house to what appears to be a collective of families who own little furniture, speak little English, and have watched D literally slave away (sweating and panting) for days without saying "hello," let alone introducing themselves or acknowledging that he is single-handedly building a gorgeous and expensive fence between our properties without asking for either help or co-payment from them.

We have been talking about whether we are racist, about what it is that has worked under D's skin in particular about the new folks on the block. But it's hard to pin down without resorting to "there goes the neighborhood" statements. It's horrible. We want to welcome them. We want to break down cultural barriers by being kind and generous. We want to embrace diversity and we want to not care how different they are from us or we are from them. But instead, we're all kinds of bent out of shape and the relationship is not off to a good start.

Why? Here's what I think, frankly: we want it both ways. We want them to be who they are but we also want them to play by our rules. For example, we say sure, they can install their thumping subwolfers in their cars on the weekend, but them damn well better not play loud accordion-and-tuba music to test them. They can have a huge extended family (we don't even know yet who lives there and who doesn't) but we don't want 10 new cars parked on our cul-du-sac every day. We want them to acknowledge the tremendous effort that D is putting into increasing the value of both our yard and theirs with this new fence, and yet we don't want to consider that they might feel insulted by fact that as soon as we caught our first sight of them, we tore down the old fence completely and started building one twice as high. This was a coincidence, but how do they know that? Have we told them? No. Have we made an effort to get to know them? No. We respect that they speak only Spanish, and yet we expect them to be the ones to strike up a conversation with us in a language they don't feel comfortable speaking. We don't know how they could afford the house next door, which sold for about $500,000, without pooling their money (as I know is a practice in some cultures) and yet we expect them to automatically offer to pay for part of the fence.

So what does this mean? It means that in spite of the fact that we own cars and work full time and have children of our own, I think we're still just kids on the playground. And we don't care if they play their games but if it's near our four-square court, they'd better play those games our way.

So.

So I baked two loaves of banana bread this evening (instead of the one loaf I usually bake to welcome new neighbors), and I'll deliver them tomorrow. (If they're still there then - so far, they've only been here on weekends.) The teenagers may break the little hand-made swing my old neighbor put in the tree for his toddlers. The men may smoke and leave cigarette butts in their driveway. Maybe the pool will go to algae. But the only thing that will truly make the neighborhood ugly is us, bitterly resenting how the village next door doesn't "go well" with the castle we've put up.

Or, to go back to the elementary school analogy: we have no intention of taking our ball and playing somewhere else, and we can't kick them out of the schoolyard. We have two choices: to fume and rage against the circumstances, or to make room on the blacktop of our hearts. Did I write that? "The blacktop of our hearts?" Sheesh. But you know what I mean.


ps - went to bed at 8pm, got up only to post this. back to bed now...