The neighbours

My leafy suburb is probably one of the most child-friendly in all of Ottawa. And yet, the street we live on has no kids under 10, save for my boys.

When we moved in, we had childless couples living on either side of us. The first couple moved out of the province in the summer of 2004, maybe a year after we’d moved in, and a woman and her three kids moved in. The kids were older – a boy and a girl around 9 and 11, and a teenage boy around 15. The boy was a nightmare, to be honest, and we frequently saw the police bringing him home or coming to get him. He left last summer, and the neighbourhood settled down again.

Last month, the fun young childless couple who lived on the other side of us moved out, too. Laura was quick to reassure us that the new neighbours would be terrific: “She’s a school administrator, and her grown daughter will be living with her.” Well, that sounded pretty good to me, even though I’d’ve preferred a family with kids that the boys could play with.

And then they moved in, and Reese and Candy arrived with them. Candy is a yappy little pug that never shuts up, and Reese is a terrifying-looking Rottweiler with a booming bark that rattles the windows. And he barks at everything that moves. He barks at the kids when they’re in the yard (it took weeks before they were even comfortable going out there, despite the eight-foot wooden fence in between our yards), he barks at the people walking by on the street, he even barks at us when we’re in the house and veer too close to the window.

Now, I like dogs. But big, nasty black dogs that scare my kids and bark like they’re the devil? Not so much. To her credit, the lady tries to control them, and we’re forever hearing her yelling at the dogs: “Reese!! Candy!! NO BARKING!!” If it’s obvious they’ve scared the kids, or if they just won’t shut up, she at least puts them in the house. But still. I’ve taken to walking the length of the fence, just to make sure it’s good and solid with no Reese-sized holes anywhere.

But even the dogs are not the worst part. What are the odds of having TWO next door neighbours, one on either side, who have decided rather than smelling up the insides of their own houses with cigarette smoke, to smoke exclusively on their respective back decks? I mentioned townhouses, right? Every time one of them is out there smoking, it drifts into my house through the open windows. I keep telling myself that the level of carcinogens in the second-hand smoke has probably been considerably diluted by the time it reaches us, but it still lingers in my mind that if I can smell it, there must be some chemical trace working its way into our systems.

By contrast, I love my across-the-back-fence neighbours. They have three kids, maybe 6, 8, and 11, and the dad is some sort of special detective. I think the mom stays home. They’re warm and friendly, and I always enjoy chatting with them. My boys stand on the slide and climber in our yard to be able to talk to the kids, and even the older kids are nice and friendly. Unfortunately, they’re also separated by an eight-foot fence, and it’s about a 10 minute walk around the block to get to their secluded little cul-de-sac. I watch the kids from their side of the fence running rampant through their yard, and wonder about cutting a gate into the fence, or at least setting up a ladder, or something. It really bugs me that there are no kids here in the neighbourhood – the kiddliest neighbourhood in Ottawa, for goodness sakes! – with whom the boys can play.

I love my house, I really do. But I want to live in one of those neighbourhoods where you sit on your porch in the late summer evenings, drink in hand, chatting with the neighbours while the kids run in a pack from house to house. I want to have kids showing up at the door at all hours, looking to play with Tristan and Simon. I want road hockey games in the driveway and tag in the park. Sheesh, we haven’t even been invited (nor, to be fair, have we invited anyone) to a playdate with one of Tristan’s classmates.

Sometimes, even as a grown-up, it’s hard to make friends.