Two years. That’s how long I had lived next door to my neighbor without ever speaking to him.
It’s not that I didn’t try. I would call out to him whenever I saw him working in his front yard. He would briefly look up from his gardening, and then turn away.
I tried every greeting I could think of. “Good morning, neighbor! Looks like a warm one! Have a great day!”
Why We Wrote This
An unexpected encounter compels this writer to see his reclusive neighbor in a new light.
When that didn’t work, I tried a foreign accent. “G’day, mate! Top of the morning, neighbor!”
Nothing.
We are different. He seems much older and lives alone. I am married and have an exuberant 8-year-old granddaughter who spends weekends with my wife and me. He has a “no trespassing” flag in his front yard. We have seasonal greeting signs (“Hello, fall!”). He has a “beware of dog” sign and doesn’t own a dog. We have a retriever that licks everyone who passes by.
Like I said, we’re different.
Which is why I was surprised when I heard a quiet, apologetic knock on my front door and opened it to find my neighbor.
“Hello,” he muttered, “I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.”
Taken aback, I couldn’t think of an appropriate response.
“It’s important,” he added, as if to justify his presence.
The man’s discomfort touched something in me, something I did not know could be there for this man, my neighbor, who had shown such disdain for me.
“Please,” I offered, surprising myself, “come in.”
He moved slowly as he entered, breathing heavily.
We sat in the living room, opposite each other, and when my neighbor began to speak, his voice sounded wounded and tired. “I know you must think it strange, my being here. We’ve never really spoken.”
“Yes, I know.”
“It’s important.” And then, as if reconsidering, he added, “Well, it’s important to me.”
At this, my granddaughter bounded into the room, unaware of what was happening. When she saw our neighbor, the man she knew had rebuffed my attempts to be friendly, she paused, and then boldly stepped forward.
“Hello, pleased to meet you. My name is Lilith. But you can call me Lily since you’re our neighbor,” and she stuck out her hand.
For the first time, he looked up, first at me and then at my granddaughter. He reached out his hand to shake hers.
“Nice to meet you, young lady. I’m Mr. Richards. Gene Richards from next door.”
“I’m not a young lady yet,” Lily corrected, hopping up on the couch next to me. “I’m a little girl. I’m 8.” And then, as an afterthought she added, “But a lot of people think I’m older.”
“Lily,” I interjected, “our neighbor Mr. Richards is here to talk to me about something. You should excuse yourself.”
“No, no, that’s fine,” Mr. Richards offered. “It’s nothing like that. It’s actually kind of silly, I suppose. You see, earlier today I thought I heard something familiar. From your backyard.”
“And what was that?”
“A wind chime.”
Lily and I looked at each other.
“It sounded like the one I used to have, hanging from a eucalyptus tree in my backyard. At least, it was hanging there until that big storm we had last summer.”
“What did it look like?” I asked.
“It was quite delicate, only about 8 inches tall. A metal moon with a smiling face – a man in the moon, I guess you’d call it, with four crystal cylinders hanging from it.” Mr. Richards paused and then, in a faltering voice, added, “It was a gift from my wife.”
There was a long moment of silence before Lily, in a quiet, clear voice, said, “I think we found it yesterday.”
Mr. Richards sat up straight, his eyes wide.
“My granddaughter and I were planting flowers,” I explained, “by the fence. I was about to throw it away but Lily …”
“Rescued it!” she cheerfully interjected, and with that, she slid off the couch and disappeared.
An awkward minute passed, and Lily reappeared in the doorway and softly padded her way across the room to Mr. Richards. She was holding the wind chime we had found.
“Is this the one?” she quietly asked.
At first, he couldn’t respond, as his eyes teared and his lips trembled. He finally managed a quiet, “Yes.”
Lily gently handed him the wind chime, spreading it out on his receiving hands as if it were a rare artifact.
“Before she passed, my wife said to remember her every time it chimed,” Mr. Richards shared. “She said it would be like her, speaking to me with the wind.”
“I had to replace the clapper with a nail,” Lily explained in a serious tone. “That’s what they call the metal piece that makes it chime.”
Mr. Richards nodded. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
Slowly, cradling the wind chime in both hands, Mr. Richards rose. “I should be going. There’s still enough light that I can hang it up.”
Lily and I followed Mr. Richards to the door. When he was about halfway down the walk, he turned. “Mr.,” and he stopped, realizing he didn’t know my name.
“It’s Bachmann,” I quickly offered. “But you can call me Dave. We are, after all, neighbors.”
“Yes, I’ll do that. I was just thinking of something. Ever hear of a fella named Robert Frost?”
I smiled. “He’s one of my favorite poets.”
“I was just remembering a poem of his we read in school. Something about fences and a wall.”
“‘Mending Wall.’”
“That’s it. There were two neighbors rebuilding the wall, and the one neighbor kept saying, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Mr. Richards paused, as if carefully considering what he was about to say. “I think he might have been wrong about that.”
I nodded in agreement.
“See ya around, Dave.”
“See ya around, Gene.”
Lily leaned up against me, took my hand, and squeezed it. “Hey, Gramps?”
“Yes, Lily.”
“I think you just got a new neighbor.”
