Two Neighbors on Opposite Sides

And an act of kindness between them

Their house

Day and night, Hank Williams, Garth Brooks, and Johnny Cash blast through their outdoor speakers.

The neighbor’s house faces ours. Their sprawling ranch, modern with dark grey siding and bright white trim, rests grandly on a corner lot. Their grass is lush, green, and short like astroturf despite the fact that it hasn’t rained in over a month. Their porch is tastefully decorated: a bench with overstuffed pillows, massive square pots filled with sweeping grasses, oversized lanterns.

Personalized monogram garden flags flank their porch at each side. Flowers and bushes, discretely spaced and uniform in size despite their variety, line the sidewalk leading up to the porch.

Various vehicles sit in or near their driveway: a motorcycle, a full-size truck, two SUVs, a trailer.

During the weekends, the neighbors across the street host lavish parties. Smokers and grills and coolers full of beer and soda crowd their driveway. Dozens of people flock to their house and fill it inside and out. There are no masks or conversations with people standing awkwardly apart. During the week, their children play freely with the other children in the neighborhood. They live in a world beyond coronavirus.

Our house

Our small, two-story is compact and tall like a hotel game piece from Monopoly. The obtrusive pale blue siding sticks out amongst a sea of houses grey or brown.

A “Black Lives Matter” sign stands proudly at the corner of our lot. Our porch is tiny — there’s only room for an ice cream parlor table set purchased secondhand from an actual ice cream parlor.

Our parched grass grows unevenly in bunches like clumps of hey. Our landscaping is minimal — a few hardy bushes and flowers that have withstood the lack of watering. Our sole vehicle stays in our garage.

We keep to ourselves. Our weekends are spent just the three of us — my husband, my 18-month-old daughter, and I. My mother, who lives in a senior community in town, visits once a week. She only leaves her apartment to walk around her neighborhood, pick up groceries, or visit us. My mother-in-law visits once a month. She works inside a building downtown and she and her coworkers are regularly tested for coronavirus. When she visits, we all wear masks and sit on opposite sides of our driveway. We’ve had no other visitors in five months.

Meeting new neighbors

My husband and I moved in a few months before the coronavirus took hold in America. During our first night in our new house, a storm dumped nearly two feet of snow on the ground.

We woke up the next morning and found the neighbor from across the street just finishing plowing our driveway.

Grateful for his kindness, my husband and I decided to go over to his house to thank him in-person and introduce ourselves.

As a new mother with a colicky baby, I was barely conscious. I pulled my greasy, unshowered hair into a sloppy ponytail and buried it under a hat. Too tired to look for socks, I pulled my 10-year-old Ugg knockoffs over my bare feet. I stayed in my sweatpants and threw an old sweatshirt over my nursing tank top that was stained with breastmilk. I put on my giant puffy L.L. Bean coat —the only one that fit me at the time.

My husband and I knocked on the door and the neighbors greeted us warmly. They invited us in. I sheepishly took off my hat, coat, and boots and stood barefoot. My husband and I struggled not to stare agog at the inside of their home. It looked like a photo from Architectural Digest, complete with wall-sized artwork and giant flatscreen TVs.

The conversation was friendly but stilted. We exchanged basic information (where we work, my daughter’s age, how long we’d been in town). The conversation fizzled out after a few minutes but was happily punctuated by questions from their bubbly and precocious eight-year-old named Emma.

My husband and I returned home after our brief chat and we fretted about whether or not we had made a good impression. We’d find out in the summer.

The neighbors shunned us

In the cold of winter, people kept to themselves. A single blanket of snow covered the entire neighborhood.

As the snow melted in late spring, we began to emerge from hibernation. In the light of the warm sun, our differences became clearer. Lawn care, social distancing protocol, and yard signs sorted houses into factions.

Our relationship with our neighbors went from lukewarm to icy. My husband and I would smile and wave to them from across the street and they’d ignore us. They’d happily chat with other neighbors on their porch and stop talking and glare at us as we walked by. “What did we do wrong?” my husband and I would ask ourselves.

From our initial meeting in November to early August, we had not once spoken with the neighbors from across the street. It had been a nine-month stalemate.

Last week when we were out for a walk, my daughter and I bumped into Emma trying out her new rollerblades. We kept our distance and chatted with her. She told us that her rollerblades were an early birthday present and that her birthday was this week. “A perfect opportunity to do something nice for her,” I thought to myself.

For Emma’s birthday, my husband and I bought a nice card — meaning the most expensive and flashiest card for girls that we could find at Target. We added a “picture” (I use that term loosely) my daughter colored and added some stickers for Emma’s new rollerblades to the envelope. Early in the morning on Emma’s birthday, I placed the card on her front stoop and hoped for the best.

Later that morning while my daughter and I were playing in the front yard we saw Emma and her dad leaving their house.

Emma saw us and waved happily. “Thanks for the card!” she shouted from across the street. “You’re welcome! I hope you have a great day today,” I shouted back.

“Actually, her birthday was yesterday,” her dad responded curtly. My sleep-deprived brain must have mixed up the dates. He got into the driver’s seat and abruptly slammed the door.

As they pulled out of the driveway and drove away, I whispered to my daughter, “Don’t worry. It’s the thought that counts.”

It’s the thought that counts.

This morning, Emma greeted me and my daughter with her usual exuberance. “Hiya!” she called out waving from her front yard. My daughter waved back and she rarely waves at anyone else besides me and my husband. Despite the ongoing tension with the neighbors, I’m grateful that Emma and my daughter remain curious and open to one another. I’m glad they are not affected by the invisible differences that apparently separate us from them. I’m hopeful that their acceptance of each other carries on as they age and grow up together. I’m hopeful that people living so close together will no longer seem so far apart.