May 13, 1998
For most of my adult life, I've lived in a succession of apartments.
Along the way, I developed an apartment-dweller's antagonistic attitude
toward those who live in nice homes on manicured streets in snooty subdivisions
... primarily because many of them seemed to bear the same antagonism toward
us apartmentites. And I won't debate that envy certainly had a part in
that attitude.
I guess the notion which always made me snarl the most was the
conception that apartment living is a lesser lifestyle.
I had the chance to reflect on both sides of that argument as
I parked it in a lawn chair on the back porch of our new house early Sunday
evening, two days' worth of the brutal, back-breaking process of moving
completed.
There were sounds of lawnmowers running, the scent of freshly-cut
grass and backyard barbecues wafting through the air. I kept waiting for
my Mom to step around the corner of the house and mention: "David, that
yard won't mow itself!"
All those years of living in apartments, I never once thought
that cutting grass or gardening could be any fun. Peg and I spent the better
part of an hour Sunday talking about which bushes will come up and
which bushes will replace them, where the chihuahuas' castle will be built
and so on, just like we'd never lived in an apartment .
Peg was all abuzz with details of how two of the new neighbors
had stopped by to say hi during the day. With a few exceptions, I only
remember shouting at neighbors to "Turn that (bleeping) thing down!" when
we lived in apartments.
(One notable exception would be the two young Mormon missionaries
who'd pitched in during the heaviest moving Saturday; were it not for them,
I think both my brother and myself would be laid out on a slab somewhere.
My eternal thanks, guys!)
Needless to say, both Peg and I were overjoyed at the prospect
of not only having multiple bedrooms, but two full bathrooms and a garage
to store all the junk we've collected. It was all I could do to keep myself
from hitting the hardware store Sunday evening and buying a load of tools
to hang on the walls. I tried to conceive how we'd ever stuffed all that
stuff into an apartment.
I could clearly hear the noises of children at play — one group
jumping rope, another playing "hide-and-seek." It took me back to my own
childhood, when we did much the same thing in and around the neighborhood
in Deer Park.
Living in apartments in years since, it seems to me that we always
had kids playing somewhere; they just seemed a heckuva lot noisier and
less organized.
The lonesome beagle of my new neighbor was sticking his nose
through a small hole in the fence, plaintively whining for attention from
his new neighbors — my chihuahuas, who were too busy investigating the
foliage to realize they have a new playmate to exchange doghouse-gossip
with.
Having a yard for the boys to romp in is kind of unique; they've
been apartment-dwellers like myself, limited to a confined space and an
occasional trip to the park. We recently added chihuahua No.3 — a 7-week-old
puppy named Sugar Baby — and I dunno, it just seemed funnier to watch her
leaping through the grass to nip Rusty on the tail than it would have been
to watch the same scene taking place in an over-crowded apartment.
Heaving a contented sigh while sipping on a cold one, I decided
that this living-in-a-house thing might not be too bad, after all.
Ohmigosh — I've become a suburbanite!