I live in a small cottage at the start of a gravel road on county highway at the neck of an island in the uppermost lefthand corner of the country.
There are three other houses, bigger than mine, down the road and this past Christmas I returned home after standing a 12 hour watch to find two tins of homemade cookies with friendly notes on them. I don't know their names, I don't know which family gave me what.
When I first moved in, an elderly man with a club foot knocked on my door and welcomed me with a baggie of cherry tomatoes from his garden.
We pass each in our cars, unloading groceries. On Sunday mornings when I'm on my bicycle and they're on their way to church and we wave and smile. One of them tattled on me to the landlord when my yard became overgrown this past spring. I had broken up with a girl I had been with for almost two years and was barely washing myself for a few weeks. How could they have known? I don't hold it against them. Not one bit.
The family nearest me has a grown son living with them. He has some clear developmental issues and knows my name and waves enthusiastically from his yard when he sees me coming home from work in my uniform.
What do you do in the Navy, he yells.
I just work in an office, I tell him.
The sadness I feel from these interactions is crushing and I don't know what prevents me from walking the 200 yards up the gravel road to talk with him a bit more. It occurred to me to do that for the first time this afternoon.
There are three other houses, bigger than mine, down the road and this past Christmas I returned home after standing a 12 hour watch to find two tins of homemade cookies with friendly notes on them. I don't know their names, I don't know which family gave me what.
When I first moved in, an elderly man with a club foot knocked on my door and welcomed me with a baggie of cherry tomatoes from his garden.
We pass each in our cars, unloading groceries. On Sunday mornings when I'm on my bicycle and they're on their way to church and we wave and smile. One of them tattled on me to the landlord when my yard became overgrown this past spring. I had broken up with a girl I had been with for almost two years and was barely washing myself for a few weeks. How could they have known? I don't hold it against them. Not one bit.
The family nearest me has a grown son living with them. He has some clear developmental issues and knows my name and waves enthusiastically from his yard when he sees me coming home from work in my uniform.
What do you do in the Navy, he yells.
I just work in an office, I tell him.
The sadness I feel from these interactions is crushing and I don't know what prevents me from walking the 200 yards up the gravel road to talk with him a bit more. It occurred to me to do that for the first time this afternoon.
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