Gifts from neighbors
Laura DeMaria
If you have been spending more time in your neighborhood these past few months, I wonder if you notice something like I do: people are friendlier. In the beginning it was because we truly had nowhere else to go, or anyone else to see, so to see another person - a stranger - across the street on the sidewalk was definitely grounds for a smile, a wave, and a hello.
Now people aren’t kind of so golden retriever about human-to-human interactions, but there is still a new sense of neighborliness that I a.) love, and b.) have personally benefited from. Twice this week.
The first time I was strolling about, as I do, mid-day. I love taking pictures, especially of flowers, and stopped to snap a few of some excellent, tall, wild-looking daisies in someone’s yard. As I stood there, trying to get the right angle, I realized the owner of the house was in the yard.
“Would you like one?” he asked.
I was thrilled and asked if I could have just one. He went behind the daisies and fished out a pair of clippers from among his tools and handed it to me.
“I planted them because my mother loved them, and they remind me of her,” he said.
When I got home, I took my single, bright pink daisy and put it in a wine bottle I had kept for just such a purpose. It has kept me company all week, beaming its beautiful face upward, gleaming in its water, creating reflections in the sun by the window.
The very next day I was strolling mid-day, as I do, coming back from noon Mass. I noticed a man rummaging through a little library I have passed many times (and from which I scooped out, earlier in the pandemic, many good Sarah Dessen novels). We said hello, and then he said, “Would you like a fig?” gesturing to the giant bush beside the books.
I stopped. I was astonished to have never noticed this particular fig tree, because I pass it all the time, and I am always on the lookout for figs. There is another one on the way to church that, sadly, never, ever has ripe figs (or else, the birds and squirrels get to them before me). Without fail, during the summer, I stop every time I pass and inspect it for edible fruit. So I was once again thrilled by the offer from a stranger, but a neighbor, who wanted to share.
He was an occupant of the house, evidently sorting out its library, and said a former housemate had planted the fig tree and they didn’t really know what to do with it. He said they hadn’t ever noticed it had ripe fruit before this year, either. He had tried one for the first time that week.
I reached up and pulled one down.
“What color would you call that?” he asked. “I am a bit color blind.”
I looked down at the fig. “Burgundy, I think.”
“Okay,” he said. “I will put up a sign that says the burgundy figs are edible.”
This afternoon, the sign is up.
The books, the sign, the fig tree.
We marveled at the abundance of red fruit hanging there, and speculated whether there was enough for pastry, how long it would keep once off the tree, and whether others would stop. He seemed hopeful they would.
I do have figs in my refrigerator, but they are in a plastic case and are store-bought. The couple I plucked from his tree do actually taste a little sour - maybe that is why the squirrels and birds have left them alone - and yet I know I will go back and get another. Part of that is the wonderful, earthy feeling of picking fruit: reaching up, gently pulling down the branch, feeling the fuzzy skin, taking that first crunchy bite into the flesh. Too much of my life is virtual now, and I enjoy this real-world life immensely.
The other part is that by visiting this tree and pulling down its fruit, I will remember this connection to another person who, simply out of generosity, offered me something. The novelty of that is somewhat due to the effects of isolation during the pandemic. But it is also because we are already an atomized society, and do not do “neighborly” things anymore. Interestingly enough, I feel more connected to my community - my immediate community, not the larger metro area - than I have in all the years I have lived here. It took a pandemic to make me notice my neighbors. Or, for us to notice each other.