I am haunted by apparitions of neighborly life. These phantasmal visions involve casseroles, coffee at kitchen tables, the sharing of garden clippers. Pieces of my congregational church upbringing are woven in, as are 1960's suburban lawn care and cross-cultural kid anthropology. I have lived parts of the fantasy--through my parents' example, through my own childhood, through piquant snippets embedded like gold in the mosaic of my own adult life.
When I first moved to Sanders I had already made friends with the family next door: The daughter of the scholar/farmer on the 300 acres behind us, Hannah and Todd had triplets close to my oldest's age. Hannah and I shared a love of literature, good food and the background of growing up in idiosyncratic families--family where reading at the dinner table was chuckled at, even as the surreptitious book was confiscated. Hannah 's versions of Apricot and Banana "Coffee" Cakes are imbued with butter, melting so rapturously on the tongue third helpings are heedless of the hips. She could make anything, and I mean anything, from "scratch."
When I was pregnant with the my only Sanders boy, Hannah and I took a morning walk nearly every day over to her parent's place. We'd walk the mile over, sit and sip a sinfully strong cup of coffee while her dad and I commiserated about politics. Then we'd head on back to wake up kids and husbands. The neighbors' big dogs we'd stirred up on on way over, were placid and friendly when they caught our familiar scent on return.
Similarly, I renewed an acquaintance from what I refer to "my prior Bloomington incarnation" (a residency just over 10 years prior to moving here "permanently" in 1995). We were pleased to haltingly recognize one another and when I asked where he lived he said "oh it's no where you'd know down south of town." You know the story. It was Sanders. Our sons ran the nearby quarries together through a summer or so of muddy clothes, tall fish tales and stem to stern bug bits. I built a friendship with Ken's wife, Mel. I had idealized Mel in my prior incarnation--she shined with all the burnished goodness of a back-to-the-garden values. Accomplished at herbalism, massage therapy and homesteading (and beautiful, as well), Mel exemplified a no-nonsense earth mother ethos that had traction for me. Sure enough, over 10 years later, her family life was immaculately tended in a tiny but cheerful home where she home-schooled as needed, managed a well-nourished family on dimes to most folks dollars, reading deep thoughts and walking to mull them over daily. When I was caught by surprise by my Sanders pregnancy, I sought Mel's kitchen counsel. When my husband lost job number 3 in as many quarters, she poured me mint tea. One idyllic Halloween we trouped around Sanders trick or treating, reunited our broods on their living room floor, popped organic popcorn and cued up The Haunting of Hill House to spook ourselves. The kids conducted complex candy trades that any market day stall owner would admire as we sipped mulled cider.
I think my neighbors' deaths shook me this year because my distance from the events echoed with hauntings of these memories...and the fact that they are just memories. These days, neighbors mostly nod and drive by, chatting on cell phones as they near their driveways. While I do stop by to check on an 84 year old neighbor lady, I don't have a clue how the elderly Pentacostal matriarch next door neighbor is faring.
I doubt my neighbors know how much I'm rooting for them. I want them to be okay. When there's shouting across the street and the sheriff arrives, yet again, I am heart-sore. But they don't want me asking, really. Their cousin down the road can say it--"alcoholism, pure and simple"...but simplicity leaves out parts of the tragedy that we all share--alcoholic or not. There are tangles of neglect, abuse, depression, wage slavery, militarism, religious guilt, untreated disease. When I referenced Wisconsin Death Trip earlier, it was not happenstance. That story is about a time when disease rose simultaneously with incomes crashing and weather disasters that destroyed crops, homes, well-being and there were few, if any, formal systems of support. Sound familiar?
Now, thanks to complex political maneuverings I don't wish to dissect here, we've managed to land back into a similar set of circumstances and the toll is similar: Disease that could be treated claims the uninsured (and the poorly insured...which accounts for most of us), along with our houses and our children's futures. Abuse and neglect ride the tailwinds of drink, drugs, denial, as houses start to empty when banks reclaim what they were so willing to over-mortgage just a year or so ago. I worry when I see the sheriff pull up across the street. And sometimes I worry when the sheriff doesn't.
