Now It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

This was a big move.

We had sold our house at a substantial loss and were uprooting our two-parent, two-child household to move less than three miles away.

Why?

The neighborhood. Or, more specifically, the neighbors.

Our old neighborhood had proved very wrong for us as our children, 6 and 3, climbed onto tricycles and demanded to be released beyond the back-yard gate. But there were no children on our block, or the next block. After looking for a couple of years, I had managed to find a playmate for my older daughter--but three blocks away, across a busy street. Setting up play dates involved phone calls and adult escorts, and it wasn’t easy.

The neighbors on our old block were mostly nice. We were very fond of a few. But we had nothing in common. Their children were grown. And we longed for something else: the kind of neighborhood where you could hang out by the mailboxes and complain about stuff. The kind of neighborhood where the kids roamed in packs, not gangs. We wanted the kind of neighbors who kept an eye on all the children on the block, not just their own.

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At times, as we lowered the price of our house in an attempt to sell, we wondered if we were fantasizing. Do neighborhoods like that really exist? My husband grew up in a Florida beachfront community where his best boyhood friend is still his very dear friend. I grew up in a place where people regularly came to each other’s aid. I recall the time my father drove a neighbor 100 miles to see a specialist at a university hospital because our car was reliable enough to make the trip, and they knew my father wouldn’t say no. He waited all day at the hospital and drove the neighbor home. No problem.

“Maybe neighborhoods like that don’t exist anymore, at least not in Southern California,” I told my husband. And yet it was something we had cherished and wanted our children to experience. At this stage in our lives, what mattered in a home was a sense of community, roots, security. Yes, more square footage would be nice. And we were hoping for a newer home that was not in need of constant repairs. But it was the neighborhood we were really investing in.

It was a strange transition from our newlywed days, when it didn’t matter who the neighbors were, to the recognition that a neighborhood--the block really--is the extent of a young child’s world beyond the home. Being free to socialize and explore something “out there” is as important to children as their parents’ freedom to drive to the mall, the office or the Grand Canyon.

The moment of truth drew near. Offers were on the table. We had a neighborhood in mind. Before the contracts were signed, my husband drove to the new block, got out of the car and approached a group of adults visiting on the sidewalk. He introduced himself politely as the potential buyer of the house for sale on the corner and asked if there were a lot of kids in the neighborhood. They laughed and began naming names.

“Fifteen, maybe 20,” came the scouting report.

Moving day. We felt as much pressure as prospective spouses meeting their in-laws for the first time. We had told our daughter there would be playmates, and she was demanding proof as the boxes were being carted off the van. We knew there would be no easing into this neighborhood.

So we undertook what we viewed as a great social experiment. Using desktop publishing on our home computer, my husband printed a bare-all flyer about our family: names, ages, interests, address and phone number. Practically nothing important was left out. Then, one afternoon a few days after move-in, my daughters and I walked the length of our long block, placing our advertisement in every mailbox. The girls thought it was great fun. I felt a little silly. It bugged me to think that someone might equate their new neighbors with “more junk mail.”

Then we waited.

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Aphone call. The neighbor across the street. Kids our ages. They would visit Saturday morning. And they did, bearing a box of muffins and cookies.

The doorbell rings. A neighbor and his daughter. Out for a walk, thought they’d stop and say hello. The daughter can baby-sit on weekends.

Another neighbor at the door. A basket of cookies. Kids the same ages as ours.

During a walk, neighbors approach as if they already know us. “You’re the new family. We got your letter. Have you met so-and-so? They have kids.” On it went.

An offer extended. A neighborhood responded.

This was a good move.