Rebecca, Who Is My Neighbor Part 1 — Pluck, Pools, and Potato Tacos
“How are you doing?” Rebecca, who is my neighbor, asks me. An important note at the top of this conversation—my neighbor and I have the same first name. Her question flits out with such ease and curiosity, for a second our roles are reversed; I’m the one asked to share. I pause. How am I doing? “I am well,” I reply with a smile. “I have a really lovely thing with this project. And I've gotten back into the studio, so that’s kind of cool for me. I'm teaching myself how to hand build with clay. Thanks for asking. Thank you.” Other neighbors may have wondered the same thing, but it is Rebecca who speaks her interest aloud.
Always a window
Rebecca brightens and says, “There has to be something to keep busy!” I nod, agreeing that I like doing things, and add that “I'm good with reflection too, but it’s definitely not what I grew up with.” We compare notes on our morning routines: I settle in with my journal; Rebecca with her coffee. 
She tells me she began this ritual in her house on Merrill Street in 2004. “I remember I would sit in the chair at the kitchen table and drink my coffee and look out the window. It's always a window. I want to stare out the window." I like to gaze out my window too. Aloud, I say, “So you’re doing it. You’re centering or meditating each day.” “I guess so. I never really thought about it,” Rebecca agrees with mild surprise. “I did that when the kids were little. I would wake up at 5:00, before them—do that [drink coffee in the quiet]—and then either cleanup or whatever. That was my only My Time.” I tell her I remember how precious alone time once was—I couldn't even pee by myself! We nod with knowing laughter. Rebecca catches her breath.
Take a breath
Our easy flowing banter could soon become a deep river of parenting stories. I inhale audibly and say, “This is good. Take a breath. You've just come back from work.” She nods, “Yeah.” After a full work day, Rebecca is keeping her appointment to talk with me. I say, “Thank you for taking part in my project.”She responds, “I loved when you asked. I was like, Oh! This will be neat!” Pluck. Is that the right word for this effervescent enthusiasm? I already love that Rebecca is sitting across from me as the next storyteller.Outlining the project origins for Rebecca, I mention sciatica, kindness, curiosity and then say, “The project is called Who Is My Neighbor? And I'm asking everybody to tell me two stories. You can tell me as much or as little as you want.” She says, “Okay.” I continue, “First: Tell me the story about moving into the house that makes you my neighbor.” Again she says, “Okay.” “If you want to think ahead, the second one is: Tell me the story of life in your house during the pandemic, during 202020.” Laughing, I catch myself. “2020—like it goes on forever—and now.”
Collapse and saving grace
Rebecca begins. “All right. The move in. Okay, so I got this house in 2008—April 2008. I was actually having to short sale my other house because I had gotten into that loan, and then that interest bearing thing and all that stuff. So I was losing that house and I didn't know what to do at that point.”I sigh. “The collapse of the housing market. Crazy.”“Oh, yeah,” she agrees. “I was in that and I was like, Oh, my God! I'm working two jobs. I can't even. The payments originally were like $1800 and went to $2700 with that variable interest rate. I was like, There's just no way! And then the market drops. I bought it at like $400,000. Then it dropped to like $250,000 in value. Soooooo, needless to say, I had a short sale that house.“Thank God, my parents were there for me. I had money from the post office, part of my retirement money. So I told my parents, ‘If I put this money down, will you please help me?’ They signed for the loan for the house. I pulled all my retirement money I had in the post office and put the down payment on the house.“That was the saving grace. I was losing my house but, thank God, my parents were there and helped me, used their name. I always made the payments and then eventually was able to get the house in my name, transferred it over and stuff. So once the whole bankruptcy and all that cleared...” I blanch when she says bankruptcy. Rebecca says, “Yeah, I had to go through all that.”“Oh, that's painful!” I say.
A stressful time
Rebeca nods, “Yeah. I hate...” she stops and begins again. “That was... that was a stressful time. I was working, and kids, and then like, Oh my God! Where are we gonna live?” Oh, the anxious underland of caring for your others, the unseen stresses of staggering uncertainty.“And how old were your kids?” I ask. “Let's see, that's 2008." A brief pause of calculation and then, "David was 8, Julie was 10, and Alyssa was 14. They're in soccer, they're in all their different activities. How do you tell them, ‘Okay, we're gonna lose this house.’?” Yes, I wonder, how?“And,” Rebecca continues, “that other house was bigger. It was a four bedroom, two story. The pool was much bigger too. It was a really nice house, you know?” She pauses. “But in hindsight, I never knew my neighbors. My next door neighbor, I met him. He was a police officer, so he kept himself. The other houses—I didn't know who they were. I never saw them. My neighbors across the street, they were very, you know.” She gestures as if to say who knows. Rebecca picks up the thread of her unraveling past with a generous twist. “In some ways, when you think, ‘Let's look at a positive’, coming here, I know my neighbors. I know practically all the neighbors here on the block. For the most part, I could point to a house and know who lives there, say ‘Hi’, at least or something.”
A home you’re never in
I ask, “How long were you at the other house?”She answers, “Three years almost.” So, for a while, I think. Rebecca goes on, “But then too, I was working two jobs to try to keep the house, so I wasn't home much, you know. What is it to pay for a home that you're never in? You just eat, sleep, take a shower, and get up and get ready to go the next day?”“That's a good question,” is my only answer."I never got to enjoy that house, you know. We never really did. And here I can. So that was it...the downturn of the market, inflated prices…” Her voice trails off. Rachel, another neighbor storyteller, would completely understand Rebecca’s experience. Both neighbors are on our street because of the crash of 2008, both had to short sale their homes.
More
There is more to Rebecca's story. She says, “During the short sale—you know it takes a while and I was already in this house—I get fined by the city because the pool turned green. It was like a $1,000 fine. I'm like, ‘Okay, who saw that the pool was green and reported me?’ And that was... I was already... Aaaah!” She vocalizes the sheer frustration of it. “They were trying to stop the sale of the house because I owed $1000 to the city and this and that, and I have to pay that, or we won't sell the house. You know how that goes.” “No,” I say with emphasis and empathy. “I don’t.” Rebecca, warm with indignation, says, “Oh, yeah! No! It's terrible!” Her laugh is tragic. My mind is roaring, but all I manage is a whisper. “It's horrific,” I say in a small voice.She goes on. “All of a sudden it's gonna go bank owned if I don't pay that [fine]. If the bank takes that house, it's gonna be on my credit even longer than if it was a short sale. So I had to scrape whatever we could to take that [fine] off in order to sell the house. It won't close because I owe the city $1,000 because of the green pool.”
I am a humanist
Let the record show that I am not an economist, a banker, or an investor. I am a humanist—
[ hyoo-muh-nist or, often, yoo- ]
a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity.
A system that strips people of their homes while protecting those who crafted and provided bad loans is putrid to the core. The ultimate green-scum pool! Beyond calling out these privileged villains, I do what I can. I remind myself and my neighbors: We are human. We belong to each other. I see you. I hear you.“What do you do?” Rebecca asks me. I have no words. For the moment neither does she. She opens her mouth in a long wail, “Gaaa!” Then she says, “Stress. Over stressed, you know…” Her voice trails off and she seems to descend into dark places.
Measure time
I call her back to ground level by saying, “And you've got three people, three kids to keep going…”With this Rebecca surfaces and finds her story line again. She says, “I was a single mom at the time because I got divorced in 2003. And juggled all that with the kids, so I did that one [the move] on my own. So, yeah!” Her laugh is dark and brittle. “That was tough,” she continues. “But that's okay. That's why I say I'm not moving, I'm staying right here. I'm paying off the house and I'm staying. The kids are grown now. Only David's at home. Julie's gone.”You need not be a parent to appreciate the mix of joy and sorrow that comes with observing the rapid growth and change that defines childhood. If you want to measure time, love a child. She says, “But it's...it's..It was nice.” I’m not sure where we’ve landed in the story timeline, so I wait. Rebecca continues, “Because then it took away that pressure of the house payments being so high.” Ah, we are out from under the big house and living here on this street. “When I first moved into this neighborhood all the kids were little. Everybody would go to this person's house, or that person’s—assuming you knew the person. They were just playing. This block was lively then. Remember?” she asks. I smile. “That's right! There were basketball games in the street.”
Potato Tacos
She smiles like the sun. “Yes! And then swimming. I never locked my side gate because they would just go swimming or whatever. And I'd make potato tacos because it was like, Oh my god, there's so many of you guys! It’s the cheapest way to feed an army of kids. Mashed potatoes and cheese and fry up the corn tortilla and Potato Tacos! They loved it.”
Let’s pause right here. I want to be more like my neighbor Rebecca with her open side gate and mashed potatoes wrapped in corn tortillas. Talk about brilliant, and kind, and generous. Devastating financial setbacks and a single income could not strip her of her delight as she cast a kitchen spell to feed a herd of hungry kids. So much scarcity smothered me when our kids were little that I could not have seen or believed that mashed potatoes and cheese were enough, even more than enough. Rebecca says, “I think that was really fun! When we moved in there was a lot of kids in the neighborhood. It was a really good cul-de-sac, you know, and then everybody started moving, but I guess it's…”I finish her thought with over-the-top drama, “People. Move. And Kids. Grow. Up!” We laugh so that we don’t cry. In my normal voice I add, “It changes everything.”
Water balloon & Silly String
Rebecca agrees, “It does. Did you know it changed the environment of the neighborhood? You don't hear the kids running in the streets, water balloon fights, or what was it? Not BB guns, but they were like the little pellet guns…” “Airsoft,” I say.“Yes! Those,” she beams. “I remember having them all over the yard or the Silly String everywhere. Silly String in the ceiling.” Such silliness prompts more laughter! She says, “We got it all off the walls. There's just a spot in the living room and a spot in my bedroom. I don't want to take it down because that's like a little memory, you know. Those are the fun times they would have, you know?”Then, without a pause or any prompt from me, Rebecca does something that no one else has done. She says, “And then this pandemic. Oh, shit. This pandemic hurt. Big time.” Story one is done. This is where we’ll begin next time for story two.
In the early days of the project Who Is My Neighbor? I was asked, “What if you hear stories you don’t want to hear?” What if you look through a window and wish you hadn't? While my neighbors tell me stories I could never have imagined—stories riven with heartbreak, regret, and trauma, these same stories are also threaded with humor, generosity, and tenderness—not one would I wish to unhear. In the wisdom tradition I grew up with people are called to “bear one another's burdens.” Another way to say this is, “We’re all just walking each other home.” I see this as part of the co-making, socially engaged process I share with my neighbors.Join me next time as Rebecca, who is my neighbor, and I walk a little further together.I appreciate your companionship,
