I started this summer convinced that my next-door neighbor was about to sell her house.
Connecticut’s housing boom means that anytime you see a dumpster in a driveway it’s likely to be followed with a for sale sign in the yard.
Within the span of two weeks my neighbor filled a dumpster, replaced the stairs by her back door, refreshed the landscaping, and ran a new electrical line.
I waved to her in the distance and thought about asking but we didn’t have that sort of relationship where we “talked” or even “knew each other’s names” so it would’ve been a little strange.
“Hi, I’m Chris. I know we’ve never spoken before but are you getting your house ready to sell?”
Of course it wasn’t any of my business but in many ways it was.
My living room and deck faced directly into her beautiful (and entirely unused) backyard. It was essentially open space amplifying my house’s “country retreat in earshot of a highway” vibe.
I don’t like change and I hate things I have no control over so anticipating new neighbors put me out of my comfort zone.
Every morning I expected the beeping sound of a moving truck to replace my privacy with something entirely distasteful like snarling dogs, brunch-prone twenty-somethings, or competitive badminton players.
Nobody wants their weekends interrupted by people grunting over shuttlecocks.
Of course (despite my brain’s best attempts to convince me otherwise) change isn’t always bad. I also imagined scenarios where the new neighbors have a child my daughter’s age providing Senita a powerful friendship or rivalry to color our quarantining days.
Or maybe they become our new best friends (though history has steered me from establishing friendships with people who can see into my windows).
I settled on a best-case scenario of a widowed pediatrician who’s taken early retirement and goes to bed with the sun every night except for when she’s babysitting, which she loves to do for free any time we want.
It was a fun distraction feeding my daydreams that abruptly ended when the For Sale actually went up – in our yard instead of theirs.
Moving to a new neighborhood is a lot more intense. I scoped the area out after we put our offer in but I’m pretty sure slowly creeping down a cul-de-sac got the police called on me.
Anyways, the officer who approached me while I idled in a nearby parking lot said it’s a very nice neighborhood though I suddenly felt a bit of a big brother vibe (and I don’t mean the delightful CBS reality show).
Nevertheless, we took a leap of faith and moved in October.
It surprised us during our final walkthrough when we learned that our neighbor (who was the seller’s realtor) had also just put her home under contract. The one that looks into our living room and whose driveway runs alongside ours.
Moving past any ethical issues about simultaneously selling an unlisted home directly next door to a house you represent, anticipatory anxiety soared back into my life like a shuttlecock spiraling over the property line and landing among the hydrangeas.
I’ve since watched the house next door with bated breath. My only clue was that my realtor said that their realtor said the new buyers were a “young couple.”
This could mean anything because they both described us as a “young couple,” and I just turned 40 and went Black Friday shopping at True Value hardware. I don’t binge watch TV, I snooze watch TV.
This week it happened. I noticed the moving truck the moment I stepped into my kitchen. Their debut left me with more questions than answers.
We haven’t spoken yet. I thought about ringing the doorbell with a freshly baked treat but this is Connecticut.
What would I even say? “Nice to meet you, my wife’s in the third trimester of pregnancy so let’s talk again once there’s a vaccine. And please, don’t be a crazy person who only talks about vaccines.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
If you enjoy my humor writing, please subscribe below.
If you want to syndicate this column, you may contact me here to discuss the details.
You may notice that I’ve disabled commenting on this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts by email at [email protected].