Lido, Who Is My Neighbor (Part 1)
Lido, who is my neighbor, comes in through the side gate of my garden. It is a Thursday evening in July and Lido, dressed in dark blue jeans and a tucked in t-shirt, must be very warm. She assures me that she came from a cold place.“You came from cold?” I ask in surprise.“Yes. When I'm go lunch, I say, ‘Oh my gosh, it's so good—out.’”Lido is the specialist for wedding and funeral orders, making multiple large flower arrangements for special events as well as standing weekly orders from a number of churches with accounts. She selects, trims, and arranges hundreds of fresh flowers in a huge refrigerator. Of course she wears heavy jeans in July and goes outside to warm up during lunch!“Sometimes,” she says, “it’s so cold inside I can't feel my toes and my fingers.” Southern California is melting this summer, but Lido works in an alternate reality, chilled among the flowers at Riverside Flower Club. As she describes the shop location, I say, “I think I've seen that. Next time I drive by, I’ll wave Hi Lido!” She laughs and tells me, “[If] you have a idea or whatever, let me know and I'll bring you the flowers and I make something, if you need something. Better price with me.”
She shared her vacuum
You may remember Lido from Esther and Joe’s story. She shared her vacuum with Esther the first day they met. Years later, Lido shared her pool with my daughter and me. She also looked out for my boy—giving the tall, skinny kid extra helpings when he came through her lunch line at Poly High School.She says, “I'm busy all the times. I like it. My house is a mess. But you know what? I'm working the whole day. I'll come in like now [after 6pm]. Sometimes I'll come in eight o'clock, eight-thirty.”“Thank you for making time. You're so busy. Thank you. I thought maybe you didn't want to tell me your story—which is okay.” Several times I texted Lido to set up an interview without a reply. I wondered if Lido wasn’t interested. Now I know: she's just very busy. Sunday is the only sure day for her to catch up—clean house, water her garden, maybe clean the pool.
I've been looking forward
Sitting across from from each other at my patio table, I feel excitement and anticipation. Lido’s story is one I’ve been looking forward to hearing. In part because she welcomed me to the neighborhood, in part because she's lived here a long time.We take our time catching up and gradually Lido relaxes after her long, cold afternoon at work. I say, “I'm going to ask you to tell me two stories.” Patient and quizzical, she looks as if I’ve asked her to tell me why the sky is blue. “I'll help you out. The first one is: Tell me the story of moving into your house—the one here that makes you my neighbor.”“Okay,” she says with evident relief. “The one I live in?” I nod and assure her, “The one you live in.”“I'm living and working in UCR with my ex-husband and saving money, we'll buy the house. [We] come in, the house is like uh—orange. Everything is orange! Carpet. Walls.”I have to laugh. “What year was it?” I ask. “1999,” she says. “Wow!” I laugh. “Orange in 1999!”
Names and ages
“Wait, wait, wait,” she interrupts. “No—1987 because Christina have like five years. [She] is a little one. No, wait. Mayra.” How often have I mixed up the names of my children? How often have I figured when we did what by their ages?“I like it because I say, ‘We have a pool.’” I smile, “A pool's nice with kids.” She nods. “And then I have Luis, [he] has a one year, one year old.” I confirm with a question, “You have a five year old and a one year old when you move in?”“Yeah, because he's four years younger than Mayra." With the ages of her children established, she returns to the orange house. "I say ‘No!’ It surprised me because the color of the house is...I say—” but she does not say. She makes a hilarious dramatic grimace. I belly laugh!She goes on. “I change the carpet and I see the wood floor and say, ‘Oh, is better!’ I leave it like that. Wood floor and mopping and then whatever; clean the house.”
This good neighbor
In the next breath we jump from inside to outside the house. “But the neighbors is okay. This good neighbor,” she gestures over my garden wall to the house that stands between my house and hers. “Super good,” Lido says. She means Mrs. Miller who lived there when Lido moved in and when I moved in.Pointing up the street she says, “This school is for my kids. They opened the kind of door... “ I realize what she means and say with delight, “The gate was open!” Lido nods, “The gate is open and my kids walking right to school. And a lot of kids coming down after school.”I ask, “Was the garden this way when you moved in?” Lido’s front and back yard spaces vibrate with green growing things. Never mind a green thumb! Lido has green fists and forearms! “No,” she says. “They don't have a garden. There's nothing, nothing. No, even no plants. No nothing. I've created the jungle now,” she chuckles.
I'm happy here for many years
Lido tells me, “I'm very happy with my ex-husband there, my kids. I'm happy here for many years. And then my ex-husband, how you say, he like more than one woman. And I say, ‘No! No, that's not good. No good way.’"Her garden flourishes, but some aspects of life do not respond to attention and care the way banana trees, bougainvillea, and succulents do.“I'll pass a lot of things, a lot of mistakes. He told me sorry, or whatever. And I say, ‘Okay.’” Here Lido looks down. “A lot of things, hard things. He's sometimes push me and… And then I buy the other house over there in Washington Street.”In 2000, Lido and her then-husband bought a larger house. His work at UCR pays well and their family has grown with the birth of her youngest child, Christina. They rent out the house here on Miguel Street and move away for a fresh start.
Big mistake
“I'm stay with him one year and a half. I'm renting this house. And you know what? Another mistake. Big mistake. ‘Done!’ I say. ‘This is done. I don't want to stay with you.’ I'm planning to go back to the house,’” she gestures to our street, “‘and I want to tell the renting people go out.’ I give like a month to look for other place.”“You could have your space,” I say; the weight and import of these words settles over me. Lido nods, “Oh, yeah. I have my space for me and my kids. Mm-hm."I circle back and ask, “Who were the neighbors that were here when you moved in?” Maybe I'm fishing for the familiar feel-good phrases—“great neighbors” and “nice people”—sprinkled through other neighbors' stories. What I catch is the honesty of Lido’s lived experience.
They don't talking with us
“They don't talking with us, anybody. It's a lot of white people. The whole neighbor[hood].”The Casa Blanca neighborhood, a few blocks to the west of Miguel Street, is historically home to families with roots in Mexico and Central America. There, Lido—who grew up in a neighborhood in Guerrero, south of Mexico City—would have been embraced in a heart beat. But when Lido moved into the house of orange everything in the late 1980’s she was met with silence.Her exterior was as surprising to her white neighbors as the interior of the orange house was to her. I wince as I realize that the integration I appreciate today was non-existent when Lido moved here.Lido tells me, “Your bedroom is like special.” I blink in mild surprise. Lido knows my bathroom layout. Our shower is gigantic! It was built for someone with special needs. “I'm babysitted here. The child in the wheelchair. The Stokesbury family. That's the only (it’s not clear what she means by only) that I remember and then white people.
Only two Latin people
“Then Mr. Dick, he's move and then Esther and Joe buy the house. That's only two Latin people here. Now look: Esther, me, how you say…?” I help with the list of Latin neighbors, “Rachel, the other Rebecca.” Lido smiles as she nods. I ask, “Did you make friends with Mrs. Miller?” Her smile warms. “Yes. Yes.” Lido’s eyes mist a little.Our neighbor Mrs. Miller passed away a few years before the pandemic. “Her. Mrs. Miller and her husband. And then Mr. Dick. Dwayne.” I never knew Mr. Dick and her mention of Dwayne as a friend surprises me. I ask, “Dwayne? Did he welcome you?” Lido nods, “Dwayne is, remember, is like rough?” I do remember Dwayne, his gruff and bluster that often hid his generosity. He and his wife Jan moved to supported living in 2019, and Mike bought their house. Speaking of the couple who bought the Mickelson house, Lido says, “But they're nice. Both is super nice."I recount the story Esther told me—about Lido sharing her vacuum. I say, “Esther said you have been friends ever since. She loves that.”“A lot of people love me,” Lido says. Her words are simple and true. “Mrs. Miller, I miss a lot. The girl next to you…?” “Marianne?” I guess. “Marianne is good, and—the mother. You remember the mother?” “Yes," I say. "Helen.” Lido says, “I don’t remember the name.” She does remembers the kindness.
Like a grandma
“All the times coming walking and see my kids. All the times talking with me and she's language…” “She speaks Hungarian,” I say. “Yeah,” Lido agrees. “And they [Helen] say, ‘Can I give you a hug?’ And my kids, love. They love my kids, like that,” she shows me how Helen would pat her child's cheek. “A touch on my kids like a grandma. Yeah,” she inhales, the long-ago kindness fresh in her memory.Lido goes on to say she doesn’t really talk with many neighbors. “Except you, Marianne, sometimes Rachel.” I smile and ask, “Esther?” She has to grin. “Esther, yeah! All the times! She's coming [home from work] and put the car in the garage and then walking to my house and talking with me. ‘How are you and what's going on? And, let's do this, and you know want?’ Or some[time], ‘I have idea on this and this and there's other. What do you think?’”Talking with Esther and Joe and now with Lido, I find more feel-good descriptions like “nice neighbor”. The stories of their shared experiences give me a glimpse inside to something much deeper. What they have created is an enduring friendship of trust and support.
Enduring trust and support
Joe told me that years ago he traveled to Peru to work on a project with Lido’s ex-husband. Lido explains that Joe, a heating and cooling expert, was supposed to set up a refrigeration system for garlic storage. But things didn’t work out and Joe—who doesn’t speak Spanish—couldn't do the work and had to fend for himself in Lima for a week! Lido laughs when I mention this part of the adventure. “I'm go with my ex-husband—Peru, Chile, Argentina.” Joe just flew home.Esther, once a paralegal, walked with Lido through her divorce. “She's [doing] my paperwork. ALL my paperwork,” Lido says with emphasis. “The divorce is like a year and I'll [offer to] pay something. [Esther] says ‘No. I don't want to charge nothing.’ Imagine! And I'm crying because sometimes,” Lido blinks away tears, “because I remember the hard times."
We got a lot of enjoy
“When I'm starting work as I'm continuing my life with my kids, she [Esther] says, ‘One day you have money, give me some. No now.’ And she don't charge me. When kids need something legal, Esther [says], ‘I'll do for you.’ We got a lot of enjoy because she help me a lot. Yeah.”Lido wipes her tears and smiles. I nod and think Brené Brown is right: “[H]uman connection is one of our most renewable sources of courage.”
As I gather stories to answer the question Who Is My Neighbor? no single answer is possible. Distilling Lido’s story words like honest, generous, and vulnerable bubble up. As I write about her experience and those of others here, I hope each entry conveys a fraction of the vibrancy, truth, and bravery so often shared with me.I’m grateful for your interest in the work my neighbors and I co-create.With gratitude,
Exciting news!! This coming Sunday, August 22, I sharing WIMN with the local community. COVID Stories: How We Made It Through is a free, live event sponsored by The California Arts Council and Inlandia Institute and hosted by The Garcia Center for the Arts. I’d love to see you there!