Hey, Neighbor

This morning I was thinking about neighbors.

Walking home from the bus stop I saw a neighbor walking her dog. We were both relatively disheveled and carrying umbrellas (it won’t stop raining here). We waved and said a quick hello, but it got me thinking about how neighbors exist in this weird space between public and private.

Your coworkers are probably the people who see you at your most put together. Even if you work from home, the people you work with are only seeing you from your shoulders up most of the time. They’re not seeing the ratty, stained pajama pants you’ve been wearing for two days or the slippers your dog chewed when he was a puppy and you should definitely replace.

Your family is seeing you at your most troll-like. They’ve seen you with dirty hair piled on top of your head, a zit the size of Mount Olympus on your chin. They know for sure just how many days in a row you’ve been wearing that sweatshirt. They see you shuffling around the house complaining about dirty dishes in the sink while you blow your nose.

But your neighbors? They see the person that exists somewhere between those two extremes. They see you walking the dog at 7am wearing a trench coat, Hello Kitty pajamas, and rain boots. They see you at the bus stop with teeth you haven’t brushed yet and hair you haven’t combed. They see you yelling at your kids to please get in the car right now we are going to be late.

And you see them, too. You see them dragging their trash to the curb in their bathrobes. Hanging their nightgowns on a clothesline. You hear them also yelling at their children to please I’m begging you stop bothering your sister.

But we pretend we don’t. Or at least we don’t make a big deal about it. We chat about the weather while we stand in our respective driveways, wearing trench coats over pajamas. We act like our public selves even though we are clearly dressed for private. It’s a strange dichotomy.

Your neighbors exist in a place that’s not quite the privacy of your own home, but it’s not quite the public domain, either. A place where your at-home self occasionally slithers out into a public space, but it’s your front yard, so it still feels like home. The place where a car none of you recognize drives down the street too fast and you all give the driver a dirty look and then share a glance that says “who the hell was that?”

To my neighbors who have seen me walking around the block with my kids with a messy topknot and goofy sweatpants - I see you with your topknot and sweatpants, too, and I’ll never say a word about it. Because we both normally look much nicer than this, right? Right. 😉