It's about the Neighbors

Sometimes I really wonder about the wisdom of raising kids in a high rise.

It's not about the yard. I'm not one to believe a kid really needs a yard; that's a lot of work that nobody wants to do, particularly in our grass-and-tree allergic family. Overrated .

It's about the Neighbors.

Don't get me wrong: I love a lot of the people who live in our building. The crazy piano playing Austrian ENT and his red-headed ballroom dancer cardiologist wife; the tall, pretty lawyer who shares who unit with a medical resident husband, a wiggly cocker spaniel, an adorable three-year-old and a new daughter born Monday. The Boy spends hours downstairs talking to the sculptor who drills and sands in the canyon and workshop below my unit. The couple across the hall love board games and leave Halloween and Easter treats for our kids. In our 15 years here we've watched a lot of people come and go. We grieved some losses, cheered others. Our whole family moped for a week after the teenager and her parents moved in August. That's all part of living in a community; all in all, I think the kids benefit from it.

Mostly we all follow the rules for living so close together:

If you spy out the windows through the canyon into other peoples' kitchens and bedrooms, you never mention what you saw. I used to call one of my neighbours Judy Cool Shoes before she even moved in because all I could see of her was the beautiful shoes amind the debris as her kitchen was remodeled. About a month ago, I glanced out my bedroom window through the sheers as I walked in and saw way too much of the crazy Austrian. I've seen many, many other things. But it's like Las Vegas, it never happened.

Develop a sense of tolerance about other people's goings-on. No, I don't particularly like it that dogs park at me at every level as we run down the stairs; it's like an ensemble piece composed of bass woofs of the Great Dane on the fifth floor and various yips and howls all the way up the scale to the shrill Pomeranian on the second. No, I don't particularly like opera, but I love hearing my singer neighbor's soprano voice wafting through the stairwell in the afternoons. And babies crying at night still wake me with aching breasts, but it's part of it. And I accept that. It's the exchange we make to live in the neighborhood, for my sense of security on the Husband's weekly travels.

But sometimes it's just too much stupidity, too many power struggles instigated by the control freaks, the NYC expats (and New Yorker wanna-bes), and the too-rich-to-have common sense.

There's the whole parking fiasco, which finally resolved in explosion when the Condo Association decided abruptly that the space I'd been parking in wasn't my space after all, mine was the one beside the stair, a guaranteed side swipe.

I've lived here long enough to know the provenance of things, and I know that space always belonged to the unit I rented it from. But the letter, with its snide tone and threatened towing at the end, ended months of conflict. I canceled the lease within the hour, and I've turned down two garage spaces in the six weeks since. I intend never to park on the property again. Problem solved. It's not a big deal to carry my 20-pound backpack and 30 pounds of groceries and miscellaneous crap the block and a half from the street if it's expected. When I get too old to do that, I'll sell the cars and take the bus. Somebody else can have the angst and the bad feelings.

There's the whole recycling saga. Almost every month, a terse note appears in the mailboxes about sorting it properly, washing it out, etc., etc. One morning last spring while we were waiting on the bus., I watched the recycling guy load all of the carefully sorted stuff into the same compartment in the truck. I talked to him for a few minutes. Turns out that sorting is a completely unnecessary waste of everyone's time. We need one container for glass, plastic, and metals; another for paper; a third for plastic bags. That's it. I've emailed the property manager and the Board President to no avail.

This month's note was particularly pointy. I give up. I no longer take my recycling to the bins in the basement over the weekend. I wait for the recycling dumpsters to show up in the service yard on Monday afternoon and carry my big plastic bins outside and dump them myself. Problem solved. I can now relegate recycling rants to the round (recycling) file.

There's the water thing. Because the City doesn't meter water, we split the building's bill 48 ways. As a result of this, some of our neighbors are rather protective of the water. Washing your car on the side of the building or in the alley will usually result in interrogation--not only is it excessive water use, it's not the proper image.

Kids like to play in water. My kids are now tall enough to reach the hose spigot in the C building canyon. Over the summer, they liked to sweep up the dust and make mud pies. Every time I caught them, I said exactly what my mother used to say when she caught me: turn it off, now. You have enough.

One evening in August I went out the back door, keys in hand, headed for Target to buy school supplies. Walked around the corner of the building to see a giant pond of water swirling around the drain in the alley and the kids laughing and running in it, squirting the hose at each other. Three sets of eyes peered out of sun room windows, eyes belonging to people I know are among the water misers. So I yelled at the children, harangued them loud enough for the ears low down to hear. I made sure to repeat the words, You should never do this again over and over, thinking the whole time of the hours we spent clandestinely hauling the hose around to the side yard where our mothers couldn't see us do the same thing. I felt like such a hypocrite: I know that they'll be out there again next summer, splashing and shouting and doing what kids do. But I had to put a face on it ... didn't I?

While waiting for the bus this morning I was talking to our building superintendent, as I do most days. He mentioned that someone called the office last week complaining about chalk drawings in the canyon.

This is not a new thing. About ten years ago, a family moved into the D building. The fifth grader walked to Cathedral every morning, sometimes accompanied by her mom and the dog, sometimes not. She invited friends over, and they often sat on the stoop watching the traffic roll by. The other kids in the building joined them, and they made hopscotch boards and played tic-tac-toe on the sidewalk, mothers chatting on the steps with drinks in hand. Several neighbors called the office and complained, went to Board meetings and made long speeches about how it made the Building look like a Ghetto. The drawings stopped. Both families moved away a year later, but the conversation stayed in my mind. My children are only allowed to play with chalk in the canyons and the north yard as a result.

Crazy neighbors aren't limited to high-rises. Across the street from our steep yard, next door to William's flat one where we played kickball and softball was a white brick house with a chain link fence all the way out within a couple of feet of the curb. The lawn was always perfect, with perfectly square shrubs and bright flowers. If any of us jumped into the narrow strip of grass to avoid a car or sneaked over the fence to get an errant ball or Frisbee, the old man would be knocking on the front door at dinner time to talk to our fathers. Not our mothers, our fathers.

My father just shook his head and shrugged the first few times. Then he told us, just don't go there. Stay on the curb when a car comes by and you can't get across the street. If toys land there, don't go get them. I can't tell you how many things we lost over the years. Anything that landed in that yard never came back.

What I took away from that: sometimes, it's better not to fight. It's better just to accept the stupidity you just can't change, to raise up your hands and walk away and avoid it. So now I'm trying to teach my kids the same thing. Pass on the stupid stuff, fight the things that really matter. Be silent in the halls. Don't leap the last three steps in every flight. The only acceptable game in the basement is Spies. Leave the Garden to the adults.

And now we'll draw with chalk only in the north yard, where the first floor resident--my second floor neighbor's kindergarten teacher 50 years ago--sits at a chair in the window and watches them. She calls me from time to time, asking for new art. Problem solved. A nice trade, really, to go from annoying one person with your presence to illuminating another's life.

Now I have to convince the kids of that, another problem to solve. And the biggest challenge is that I think it's idiotic, too. Stupid and mean and very sad.