Wow—you all had a lot to say about stoves! I got texts, dms, emails, and chats from last week’s post; snail mail may be awaiting me back in Brooklyn. I really appreciate the feedback and I’ll soon post my takeaways from all your detailed and passionately opinionated messages. In the meantime, today we’re covering neighbors: what I’ve learned from being a neighbor in close NYC quarters for many years, and what I’m learning from my soon-to-be neighbors in Ojai. I’m also sharing what we put in the gift bags we brought to their doors.
A few years after I moved to New York in the late 1990s, I did something colossally dumb in the kitchen. In trying to forcibly unstick two hot pans, I sprayed boiling oil and water all over my face, chest, and hands. I needed help, so I knocked on the door across the hall. I didn’t know Rick and his wife Paula all that well, but we’d chat by the elevator, and when my door was open, their young daughter Charlotte would dart in and run around my apartment. That day, Rick took one look at me and didn’t hesitate. He escorted me to the emergency room and stayed with me until I was bandaged up and ready to return home. On another morning, when I was waiting for the elevator to go meet Tad for coffee, a different neighbor, Brian (a writer for Conan O’Brien) staggered out of his apartment to tell me that something strange had happened; a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Did I want to come over to watch the news with him and his wife?
Neighborly bonds can run both shallow and deep. Most of the time, you encounter each other as you’re coming and going; as you’re doing chores; as you’re collecting your mail. Occasionally, there’s an issue to discuss—a leak, a broken sidewalk, a dead tree. These interactions are usually polite and transactional: Who’s going to call the guy with the chain saw, then? But something about sharing a wall or a property line gradually fosters a deeper bond (and sometimes, yes, deeper resentment) among us. I love this about humanity: We are wired to connect with and protect those close to us. People think of New York City as a place where you can be anonymous. While you can go that route, in my experience the city encourages the opposite. I didn’t know what it meant to be a good neighbor until I moved from my childhood home in the Pennsylvania woods to the ninth floor of the Upper West Side building that I shared with Rick’s and Brian’s families. When I left Pennsylvania, no neighbors came to say goodbye because we didn’t know most of them. When I moved from the Upper West Side to a place in Brooklyn, where Tad and I still live, it was a teary departure... Subscribe to Homeward to unlock the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Homeward to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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