Accidental community
A little bit of the 1950s has crept into our life. When the weather is nice on weekdays, we frequently arrive home to find our downstairs neighbors (aged 5 and 8) playing in the courtyard. Dutch plays with them while Cook and/or I are cooking dinner and doing other household chores. I feel like Mrs. Cleaver, hollering out the window for Dutch to come on home for dinner. Cook and I are a little taken aback by it, and not entirely clear on what protocol we should be following. We check on them frequently out the window, and the relevant downstairs parents do the same. Dutch is a pretty responsible and well-behaved kid, and these kids seem to be pretty decent. They're very nice to her, and the worst behavior I can pin on them is that they pick the flowers and sometimes yell more than I think considerate in a multi-unit courtyard.
So... it's good. It's wholesome! It's so unexpected. So very unmodern. Maybe it's because I have so much angst about the loss of community and the loss of childhood (though I'd like to say that my dad's stories of his semi-feral childhood are totally terrifying, and almost always start with a sentence like "so we used to run around in the sewer system...") that I really thought I'd have to work to establish some of those things for Dutch. I do usually have to make an effort, and sometimes a big effort, to apply my personal ethics to my life. But apparently sometimes I don't. Sometimes, without even trying, I get to to have my kid playing outside my window with other kids on a lovely spring evening, and I get to hear her say "Mom, I want to stay out! Do I haaaaaave to come in?"
Also, speaking of throwbacks. I am thrilled (and actually, I may have already posted about this, because I'm senile) by the density of our living situation. In our wing of the building there are 12 people living in four two-bedroom apartments, with an approximate TOTAL private living space of 2500 square feet, or just over 200 square feet per person. That's pretty amazing in this day and age - according to some random internet stats, the typical new house in America in 2003 had about 900 square feet per person.
That's my report from 1952. Sent to you by magical technology from the future!
So... it's good. It's wholesome! It's so unexpected. So very unmodern. Maybe it's because I have so much angst about the loss of community and the loss of childhood (though I'd like to say that my dad's stories of his semi-feral childhood are totally terrifying, and almost always start with a sentence like "so we used to run around in the sewer system...") that I really thought I'd have to work to establish some of those things for Dutch. I do usually have to make an effort, and sometimes a big effort, to apply my personal ethics to my life. But apparently sometimes I don't. Sometimes, without even trying, I get to to have my kid playing outside my window with other kids on a lovely spring evening, and I get to hear her say "Mom, I want to stay out! Do I haaaaaave to come in?"
Also, speaking of throwbacks. I am thrilled (and actually, I may have already posted about this, because I'm senile) by the density of our living situation. In our wing of the building there are 12 people living in four two-bedroom apartments, with an approximate TOTAL private living space of 2500 square feet, or just over 200 square feet per person. That's pretty amazing in this day and age - according to some random internet stats, the typical new house in America in 2003 had about 900 square feet per person.
That's my report from 1952. Sent to you by magical technology from the future!
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