Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Across the Driveway
The man next door was a boy when we moved in. He built skateboard ramps on the sidewalk and organized fishing expeditions of neighborhood kids. His parents had terrific shouting matches in our shared driveway. We’d stop what we were doing in our kitchen, waiting for something worse to happen but it never did.
Over time, he grew up. His parents divorced and his mother moved out. He stayed in the house. He came and went. We said hello. He had a series of new schemes, enterprises, companies. We watched from across the driveway. Chatted now and then.
Then suddenly he had a partner and she had children and there was a lot going on in the driveway. Cars going up and down. New people. Busyness that hadn’t been there for years. Where there was a single man there was now a family. Like sprouts in a jar on the ledge of the kitchen window. Just suddenly lush.
Then the partner left but the children remained. And our neighbor, who always seemed like such a boy to us, became their dad. At first, it was so strange to watch, him shepherding them to school and back. And then we saw grey in his hair, watched him unloading bags and bags of groceries, and it became clear that he intended permanence.
Sometimes we would hear him yelling at the kids. We understood this because we yelled at our kids when they were growing up, not realizing that the neighbors, like us, could hear it all, that they slowed what they were doing to listen.
One night, unbeknownst to me, my husband talked to our neighbor about his yelling at his kids. He reminded him that it sounded like his parents so many years ago. And since then, the yelling has disappeared. Tonight, we sat on our porch, looked across the driveway at our neighbor grilling while one of his kids did her homework at the picnic table, their dog bounding over the backyard bushes.
Their being is sublime. Like ours. We are on our back porch, watching them between the branches of our overgrown forsythia bush. We are in no hurry, sitting here, glad for the fortune of watching our neighbor and his daughter whose hair is a different color today than yesterday and their fine dog who greets us with tail wagging every day even though our dogs bark relentlessly. They are all at ease. Happy. At home. We linger on this small luck, our little driveway luck.
People think getting older is tragedy. They’re wrong. It’s riches.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Linger.”
17 Comments on “Across the Driveway”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
i want to be howard in my next life
Beautiful observations. So much luck in this story. Luck and grace. The kids are lucky to have such a great father figure. Your neighbour is lucky to have had someone such as your husband speak gently to him and with grace about the yelling. Lucky to have had the reminder, the gentle pointing out and wise to have the grace to hear it without defensiveness and to take heed.
A nice reminder of how we can all support and and help each other to be our best selves.
Your stories remind me to keep trying to be my best self. Thanks.
This is one of your best.
Reblogged this on Red's Wrap.
I love reading your thoughts on aging. It causes me to calm down about the wrinkles forming on my mid fortyish face. I’m getting tired of trying to fight them. It is to no real avail and I…I have much else to do. I like reading that it is not injustice but that it is natural and part of life. This world screams at women to stay young and beautiful but ah, acceptance the whisper we rarely hear. Thanks for that.
There are blessings in retirement. Though time whips by faster and faster, I seem to find more time to notice, to enjoy the insignificant, to be present. Thank you for capturing my experience and helping me to realize it.
I’m not quite retired although being a consultant has a lot of the great aspects of retirement – like pretty much doing what I want when I want to – but I’m at the age where time does truly seem to be whipping by. It’s astonishing, really. I’m still getting used to writing 2015 on things and the year is half over. I do like this part of it – connecting a dot from today from one thirty years ago – seeing how things turn out.
Such lovely appreciation.
Thank you for your comment and for stopping by.
Beautiful story. It’s amazing what we see if we just slow down n pay attention.
So true. Thank you!
You’re welcome. Have a lovely day 🙂
Tis is such a lovely and touching story, Jan. Just why a few tears welled up in my eyes I can’t say. Perhaps just because it is such a joy to read such a gentle and well-written account of life. Judy
https://grieflessons.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/incredible-wyoming/
Thank you so much, Judy.
A beautiful story about what can be seen over time if one will just set a spell and drink slow of the scenery.
Slowing down has its benefits!
Yes it does. I don’t slow down enough.