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On my first sleepover, my neighbor, Lou Guzzetta, insisted I wear this night shirt.
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As a society, we've become fragmented by ethnicity, income, red state vs. blue; pro-this, anti-that. But we also divide ourselves with invisible dotted lines. I'm talking about the property lines that too often isolate us from the people we are physically closest to: our neighbors.
That thought first occurred to me in the aftermath of a tragedy on my suburban street in Rochester, New York: a man shot and killed his wife, and then himself; their two young children ran screaming into the night. I knew the couple just a little, enough to wave "hello" if I saw them out jogging together. Later, I learned that on the day she was murdered the wife had feared her husband and had tried desperately to contact her best friend to see if she and her children could stay over that night. What she didn't know was that her friend was out of town on a day trip. And so that evening, when her husband got home and began burning their mortgage papers in the fireplace, she had nowhere to go: despite having lived on our street for seven years, she didn't know any of the neighbors well enough to seek shelter at their homes. Within an hour of his return, her husband killed her.
After the funerals, the children moved in with their grandparents and the house was put up for sale. Yet my neighborhood seemed little affected. A family had vanished, yet the impact on our neighborhood was slight. How could that be? Did I live in a community or just in a house on a street surrounded by people whose lives were entirely separate? Few of my neighbors, I later learned, knew others on the street more than casually; many didn't know even the names of those a few doors down.
Why is it that in an age of discount airlines, unlimited cell phone minutes, and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don't know the people who live next door?
I began to wonder: what would it take to really get to know my neighbors? Not just what they did for a living and how many children they had, but the depth of their experience and what kind of people they were?
And what would it take, I wondered, to penetrate the barriers between us? I remembered childhood sleepovers and the insight I used to get from waking up inside a friend's home. Sitting around another family's breakfast table, suddenly people who previously were just "my friend's mom," or "my friend's older sister," became real and I could see the relationships between family members. Would my neighbors let me sleep over and write about their lives from inside their own houses?
I'm excited, and a little anxious, about my book, "In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time," being published on April 6. For nearly seven years, I've lived this story: approaching neighbors and asking if I could sleep over. Surprisingly, more than half said yes. Eventually, I met a woman just three doors down who was seriously ill with breast cancer and in need of help. My goal shifted: could we build a supportive community around her--in effect, patch together a real neighborhood?
I'm excited because after so many years I can share this story, but I'm anxious, too, because I don't know how the book will be received, or even how the neighbors I wrote about (with their permission), will feel about seeing themselves portrayed in print.
I hope they will like their portraits well enough and feel the trust they put in me was not misplaced. I hope, too, telling this story will bring something positive out of my neighbor's tragedy, and also help erase some of those invisible lines that separate not only us, but communities everywhere.
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On my first sleepover, my neighbor, Lou Guzzetta, insisted I wear this night shirt.
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Michael Sigman: Neighborhood E-lists: Opportunity for Community
Michael Sigman: Creating Community in LA: Neighborhood Meditation Groups
Frances McInnis: The Vancouver Games: U.S. and Canada Are Neighbors, Not Twins
To truly get to know someone, and I've had both the pleasure and the pain of that experience quite a few times in my rural neighborhood, you have to spend enough time with them to get the barriers down, to talk, to laugh, to argue... help them out when you are sacrificing your time that could be spent on other important things. I'm sure you have a nice book, but you never sanded down past the veneer with your neighbors. Not that I blame you. There's generally some pretty seedy stuff hidden in there, and who wants to see that?
And it's not age specific or economic conditions. Some have kids, some are retired. Some are bachelors. Some are musicians, some are construction workers. The chief of police lives two houses away. When one of us feels like having a picnic or bar night at the house, the word goes out verbally, and you mosey over. No phones, tweets, or e-mail.
Maybe the rich folk have their mcmansions and look like they're living large. That's fine. But if their neighborhoods are like mortuaries, then I'd be quite happy living in my little economic bracket. Looks like money really can't buy everything. And well, that sucks for you.
Being rich and having a big house doesn't make you a bad person or have to have these "drawbacks" you describe.
If you've always equated having money to something bad then it (money) has probably eluded you. I'm happy you have a cohesive neighborhood and great relations with those on your block. Now have that without feeling the need to put down another group. Just enjoy. Life is good on both sides of the fence. Money isn't the evil, it's the evil people with or without money that suck.
Going back home today, that gravel road is now tar and the speed of the cars zipping by doesn't welcome eye contact or an acknowledgment for fellow strangers. But all is not lost...
I've brought my childhood manners into my now city/suburban life. In my daily walkabout I make the effort to acknowledge, glance, smile, wink or say hello to those I briefly encounter. If for no other reason than to say...I see you. You have to make the effort no matter the neighborhood.
I see a lot of cynicism posted here. Mark my words, it has or will carry through to your reality. If you say there's no time for meet-n-greets with the neighbors, then so shall it be. If you say it's too dangerous to get close with your neighbors, then so shall it be. No time? OK. Too hard? OK. Life is what you make it.
When i leave for work at 7:00 a.m. (and my husband leaves at 6:00 a.m.), I deliver both children to school and daycare. I take my middle school child to school because he constantly misses the bus and was apparently hitching rides to school with total strangers in our neighborhood without my knowledge.
I arrive at work at 8:30 a.m. work until 6-7 p.m. My husband works 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. so he can pick up our younger child from daycare before 6:30 p.m. By the time we are all home, have dinner and finish homework, there is NO TIME to meet neighbors before bed. Weekends are church, errands that simply cannot be completed during the week, and any family time we may have.
There are very few stay-at-home moms in any of our neighborhoods surrounding - we cannot afford to be if we ever expect to own a home, put our children through college or retire before we're 99. It's a far cry from my 70's neighborhood growing up in north Georgia. Sad really.
If being with your neighbors and your community is important enough to you, you make time. If it's not important to you, you won't make the time. Case in point: certain times of the year, we neighbors have Friday or Saturday night impromptu meals. You get out of your car from work, freshen up, and walk over. You get 2 hours of just munching, cocktails, and catching up. TV is on, could be something cheap like clams on the grill (cheap around here if you know where to go). The kids are fed. 4 hours later, you're now completely reconnected with the neighbors. All it takes is a couple six packs, couple packs of burgers, rolls, couple bags of chips, and whatever anyone else has time to pick up on their way home that day. We find silly reasons to do it. "Going back to school night". "Pre Christmas Party." Little league season ending team parties. Blizzard party. And I haven't even lived in this neighborhood all that long. If you all found the time, you'd say, cripes we should do this more often. And then it will.
In the 13 years that I've lived in my neighborhood, I was shocked to find out there were two kids two houses down that were the same age as my kids that had lived there the entire time.
Of course, there's also the fear factor. That red letter Halloween in 1982 and the Tylenol poisoning. The fear has never let up.
Just look at our justice system, the economy, health care, education, and all the crooks on Wall Street.and in DC; stealing our homes, pensions and trust.
We don't value anything except paying the bills, for all it's wonders technology has divided us into doing a whole lot of nothing worth doing
As predicted, we're all bowling alone.
The problem of America are at it's roots, and I know what I'm talking about. I emigrated to this country when I was a teenager and I can tell you I was shocked by the coldness of the people in this country. The first apartment complex we lived in we got kicked out because children were not allowed. Back in my home country in Eastern Europe I used to eat dinner at whichever house I was at in the neighborhood depending on which friend I was playing with. We knew everyone on our street, and in the summer we would camp together, or even go on more extended vacations.
The sickness that is so obvious in American politics is an extension of a more serious sickness in American society.
the houses are very far apart, and no one has livestock, or any other reason to be outside
maybe the author should try living in a real neighborhood, rather than the street of dreams...
where people mow their own lawns and the houses aren't hundreds of feet apart....
I look forward to hearing more about this book.