Won’t you be my neighbor

Living in a duplex is a gamble: Sometimes you get a yeller, or a smoker or a tiny barking dog. Sometimes you get Andrew and Molly.

When my wife and I bought our condo, we knew it was one half of two identical units in the same house, split down the middle. A month after we moved in, our neighbors through the wall moved out. We didn’t know them, but we heard them and occasionally smelled them: cigarettes, yelling, swearing and a little pug yapping anytime we closed a door. Then one day, it was quiet, and that weekend, my neighbor packed the house into a truck.

"This was an awesome place to grow up," said the 30-something in a thick Boston accent. Before he left, he gave me local restaurant fliers and two large traffic cones to reserve my parking spot when it snowed.

A realtor bought the condo. He painted, upgraded and rented it out. “It’ll be a young couple and a dog,” he told me, and a few weeks later, we met Molly and Andrew—and Scoops.

This could go any number of ways, I thought. Would we like these people? Would they like us? Would we be on a first-nod-basis? No names, just nods? This woman was too happy for a New Englander—would it be a problem? All this joy? So close? Andrew’s reserve fit our ways, which was assuring: they weren’t complete psychopaths.

Then we learned Molly is from Kansas City, which was wild because my wife is from Kansas City. Andrew is from Carlisle, and I’m from Lexington. Crazy, we all agreed, laughing, astonished that our lives somehow brought us to this shared wall.

We became fast friends.

Scoops was a curly-haired thing, pleasant and calm; a good dog. And not long after they moved in, Molly told us her news: she was pregnant.  “Scoops is so excited!” she said.

Molly has this gift—she takes the liberty of speaking on behalf of her dog and baby and somehow you don’t dislike her for it. “Hank can’t wait until next summer when he can play with you boys!” she told my toddlers, who were splashing in a tiny pool. When they had family over, we would hear Molly’s piercing, maniacal laugh: a laugh that I immediately loved for its unabashedness, its contagion, its sheer volume.

We grew into an easy rhythm. I’d ask Andrew, a green thumb, what to do about my ivy problem. And what’s this plant? And he’d offer herbs from his garden. “Anytime, just come grab some,” he said, handing me a fistful of basil. Molly and my wife, Taylor, talked across the backyard fence, trading baby gear and birth stories and travel plans. One night, Andrew and I went to Pleasant Café. “You wanna tie one on?” he asked me at the bar. And so we did. We drank beers and talked about parking lot real estate, on-street parking and also art.

This could go any number of ways, I thought. Would we like these people? Would they like us? Would we be on a first-nod-basis?

On summer evenings, I took the trash to the bins, looking to my right to see if they were in their yard. If they were, we’d talk until we decided to just hop the fence. A couple cold beers in one hand, a kid or two in the other, the boys would play with Scoops and we’d talk about anything.

Fall brought yard clean up and adorable kid Halloween costumes, and then suddenly, it was winter. Christmas, New Year’s, my family got Covid, then the flu, then the stomach bug. And then, a text:

"Scoops is so sad to be moving away!" Molly said. "Hank will miss you guys so much!"

Wait, what?

Have you thought this through?! I thought about texting—joking, mostly. Weeks after they moved out, in the dog days of gray winter, I’d put my boots on, grab the trash, step into the crunchy snow and look to my right. Through my breath, it was just their empty yard.

“I think I’m sad about our neighbors moving,” I told my wife, embarrassed at how much space they occupied. What, did I think they were going to live there forever? They were young, renting, she wasn’t from here. He was battling traffic on I-95 every day. Of course it made no sense for them to stay. But his family was here, I thought. He was from here. Did he not feel that crushing obligation to stick around?

I made the mistake of thinking my friends were done moving. Back in my 20s, I left Michigan for Chicago, then Chicago for Boston. My friends and I expected people to move away. We were kids—of course we were moving. But now? We had kids. Weren’t we settled?

It didn’t take me long to realize that I’m sad about my neighbors moving, but what sank in later is that I’m proud that I’m sad. It means I cared about them.

We could have done that New England thing, could have communicated that Boston-chill for 10 years until we were certain they would never leave. Then, and only then, when they had earned our trust, we could be friends. We could have said, “no thanks” when they invited us over with cheese boards, we didn’t have to host them for backyard frozen pizzas and beer. Life would have gone on—and life would have been less rich.

In “The Four Loves,” C.S. Lewis writes, “To love at all is to be vulnerable,” and if you want to keep your heart from breaking, “you must give it to no one, not even an animal.” In this scenario, no, your heart will not be broken, but it will become “unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

My kids still pound on my neighbors’ door, still steal their mail. “Mah-wee. An-doo,” my youngest will say with conviction, pointing at the red door. I reply, “They moved, bud, to the middle of the country.”

So, what happens now?

We all get another chance. Through the wall, I hear a hammer, a drill. A carpenter fixing something, the painter’s music wafting over. In a few days, we’ll hear the new neighbors moving in.

The realtor already told me who they are. A young couple, with a baby on the way.

Follow Cog on Facebook and Instagram. And sign up for our newsletter, sent on Sundays. We share stories that remind you we're all part of something bigger.