And then I was able to take in more of the situation. One of my neighbors was moving out. I was not close with them. But I had gotten used to them. As annoying as they could be sometimes.
I think it was the first full week of working from home during the pandemic in March, 2020, when I went for some outside time with my kids in the mornings. We would be having a nice time, playing hockey or some other sports when we would just hear some loud child calling out somewhere. We would look but couldn't see where it was coming from.
Eventually we figured it out. It was our neighbor's kid, standing on the porch, calling out to another neighbor friend, probably on a porch or looking out their window from somewhere we couldn't see. Anyways, the previous days, he or she must have been calling out from inside the porch door.
The calling out didn't really bother me much. It was kind of nice, I guess. They get to see their friends from their houses, even though they couldn't play together. But my kids found them annoying.
But what did bother me about the Foxhounds is that sometimes they would just let the kids play on the street unsupervised. I get that we are in a gated community, but there are still cars around. And visitors and delivery drivers do speed through the narrow streets despite the 15mph limit posted everywhere. Sometimes the adults would be chatting away with their adult friends while the kids are just roaming around in the middle of the road.
But it's their life, I guess. And with them moving away, they did survive, after all. So far.
What else? They had Christmas lights on the tree in the front of their house. It would go on around Thanksgiving. It stayed on until around Valentine's Day of 2021. Or maybe even later. We did the same. I think our tree stayed up until Easter. And so did the lights on our decks.
But yeah, they are moving away. I don't know why I feel a little melancholy about it. I don't even know them. Nor frankly, do I really care about them. It's just change, you know? I guess I just like things to stay the way they are as much as possible.
During those stay at home days of the pandemic, I definitely got to know the neighbors a lot more. There were many to whom I would always wave. Nowadays, we barely look at each other. There were some who would stop by and chat for a few. Now they just move.
And then there were some who just disappeared. There was a family who would always walk by in the afternoons. Sometimes I would see the little boy and girl, maybe six and eight, running through the street by themselves. And I'm thinking, are they here alone? But then trailing behind them would be the dad and mom and their black dog.
One time the dad asked why we have Devils and Capitals gear. I explained that the Devils were our team, but the Capitals were my kid's team. I'm not sure he quite understood it. But o-welles. I was hoping that by the time fall came around, I would give them the info to join hockey. But by then, they had disappeared. They stopped coming around. And I didn't see them anymore.
Obviously they moved. And I know that we weren't close. But it's still kinda sad that we didn't get to say goodbye and good luck.
There was actually this guy who did say something. He was in his early twenties. He used to walk by our street as my older kid Rusty would be doing his hockey drills. We would say hello to each other and keep walking. One day Rusty and his little brother Dusty were playing in the rain, and the guy came walking by and said, "It's just water." It was a sudden rain and other neighbors had run away quickly to escape the downpour.
One day, we were outside again, me and my boys, and this car stops suddenly in front of our house. The guy gets out and approaches me. He said he was moving and he said good luck. I said good luck to him, too. And then he said that he always noticed me out playing with my kids and that I was a good dad and he just wanted to tell me that. And he said he hoped he could be the same one day. So that was nice. And that was the most we ever talked.
There were a bunch of others, too, who have gone. They would wave when they walk by our street. And sometimes when my boys and I would skate or bike around the neighborhood, we would recognize them and wave. As we go our way, my boys and I would say to each other, "Ah, so that's where they live".
Maybe one day, we'll be on vacation or something somewhere and bump into an old neighbor and we would say, "Ah, so that's where they live now!"
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