Under the Same Roof

Out of our kitchen window I spotted our neighbor, Sandy, walking up our back porch. "She's here!" I called to Rachel since my hands were full, straining the pasta and grilling the chicken.

We first met Sandy the day we came to check out this duplex. I noticed a very nicely kept garden and a lady in her seventies who greeted us with a smile and a wave. Since moving in, we have had numerous pleasant conversations with Sandy as we have come and gone, and during one or two of them we had extended an invitation for dinner.

She placed a gift on the table and we poured some wine from Traverse City*. I served pasta with chicken and a simple Alfredo sauce while we got to know one another better. 

Sandy moved into this duplex eighteen years ago with her second husband, "best of friends". They
taught at the same school and it was both of their second marriages. However, about ten years ago her husband suffered a fatal heart attack and she's been living on her own ever since. Her children moved closer and bought her a cat to keep her company. She wakes up early every morning and spends her time tending her yard**, playing with her cats, and working at the local museum. As we talked she smiled a lot, laughed a lot, and spoke sweetly of everyone.

We got the feeling that she doesn't have a whole lot of community besides family, that maybe a dinner with others is not a part of her weekly experience. We exchanged numbers, which "makes [Sandy] feel a lot better". 

Rachel and I love having people over, but there's something special about neighbors. We share a wall and a yard with Sandy. She knocked on our back door instead of our front door. And as we let her back out the way she came in and as we said our goodbyes, I noticed something. A goodbye to our neighbor doesn't signify a whole lot. Because the truth is we're all sleeping under the same roof. 

*We do not normally have wine with dinner, mostly because it's expensive. We bought this Riesling for some special guests from California who were visiting, but they had brought their own bottle! (What do you do in that situation? I think you're supposed to open the guest's bottle. How lame would it be to bring a bottle of wine over to somebody's house and they just open their own and put yours on the shelf?) So we still had this bottle saved for some special occasion, which we decided was deserving of tonight. It was only after we all had a glass or two that we learned she, too, rarely has wine due to health reasons. What a special occasion for all of us!

**Every Wednesday, seventy-year-old Sandy opens the shed in the back yard, pulls out a John Deere and cuts the grass riding high up on her lawn tractor. Every time she goes to shut it off it backfires, which is pretty badass.