The History of Neighbors

After our dog nipped their daughter, the rabbi’s wife invited us to Sukkot dinner.

Even though it was close to twenty years ago, I remember that we had spent a long hour talking in our driveway – me and my husband and the rabbi and his wife – about what had happened with our dog and their daughter. The rabbi’s wife was grateful that my husband had rushed across the lawn to lift the little girl over his head because she had frozen in the moment. My husband and I were mortified that our beloved dog, Tiny, an Australian Shepherd mix, had decided the little girl was prey and chased her down the sidewalk in front of our house. Before he darted after her, Tiny had been lolling in the sun, as mellow looking a dog as you could imagine.

“You are saying all the right things,” the rabbi said. We apologized over and over. Offered to pay for any care needed. Offered to do whatever the authorities and the rabbi and his wife thought appropriate with our dog. It was all sickening and heartbreaking. Even though the nip wasn’t serious, the fear it installed in their sweet precious girl was.

In the days after, we kept to ourselves. We guarded Tiny, kept him close and leashed.

And then the rabbi’s wife called and left a message. Would we come to Sukkot dinner? This meant sitting outside in their Sukkah, a temporary, roofless structure put up just for the week of Sukkot. We said yes, there was no way to say no.

The dinner had a dozen courses, each with a reading and a song. There was praying with eyes closed and sometimes swaying with the praying. In between there was chit chat and chatter, the little girl Tiny nipped just one of nine children, each one beautiful and gracious. We went to the rabbi’s house for Sukkot dinner several years in a row and then one year we declined. They seemed hurt by this but never ceased in their friendliness towards us.

I was reminded of this time at the block party last night. The rabbi and his wife and one of their grown sons came to say hello. They didn’t sit down or eat, the food not being Kosher, but worked their way through the crowd to greet each neighbor and converse. Out of earshot, I tried to tell another neighbor the story about our dog and their daughter and about the whole family’s reaction of compassion and forgiveness, but it didn’t come out right. It just sounded like a bad dog story.

But it is a good neighbor story, an unforgettable one, a little gift of history.