Credit: Amy L. Hatch
By Amy L. Hatch
Moving to Urbana was a crash-course in real estate and independence.
Just nine months before we packed up and moved to the Midwest, my husband and I bought our first house. It was a 1909 Dutch Colonial and we it found after months of searching under the watchful eye of the real estate agent who rented me my first apartment.
Mark is a careful shepherd with gorgeous blue eyes and a silver tongue, a dead ringer for Anderson Cooper in visage and demeanor both. He patiently helped us examine every available property in the city, pointing out ancient wiring and bad basements.
Finally we found “the one.” We fought hard for that house and after living there for a nanosecond, we were off to Urbana to find a new home.
It was hard.
I was reluctant, the housing stock didn’t meet my expectations and the three brutal days of exhausting showings in the high heat of July were disheartening. We finally settled on the home we still live in today, a half-built generic Colonial that met our minimum requirements.
The neighborhood is meant to be conducive to pedestrians, with the garages in the back, sidewalks and large porches in the front. I hoped for a street filled with small children.
Instead, everyone parks on the street (the driveways won’t accommodate two cars) and porches serve as a receiving area for UPS packages and fliers from the weed guy and the Chinese restaurant.
The blinds on every window are mostly closed. We do not have friends in our neighborhood—for that, I had to strike out on my own.
That’s why it was startling to hear a knock on the door Friday afternoon and to see our neighbor through the window. She’s a lovely young lady, we wave back and forth when we see each other coming in and out of the house through our back doors.
Here she was, at the front.
Henry rushed to open the door and there she stood, with a vase full of flowers.
“Hi!” she said. “I have so many flowers left over from work, I wanted to share them with you!”
I took the cold vase from her and held out my hand.
“That is so lovely!” I replied. “I’m Amy.”
“I’m Allison,” she said, and waved at my husband standing behind me. “Have a great night!”
And she was gone.
I put the vase of flowers on the living-room end table and every time I look at it I smile, heart filling with a strange kind of delight thanks to this gesture made by a stranger.
But she isn’t, really, a stranger. Allison sees me toss my garbage out the back door. She sees me traipse to the mailbox in my slippers. She hears me reprimand my kids when they forget to close the screen door in the morning, she hears their tiny voices telling me the intimate details of their school days as we tumble back home in the afternoon.
And just this weekend, I learned her name, after seven years.
When I moved to the Midwest I expected to see and be surrounded by silos. I never expected to live inside of one.
What can I say? We have some wonderful, open and friendly neighbors–and others who we hardly know after 20 years in this house. I’m generally introverted and don’t go out of my way to cultivate new friends but my wife is just the opposite. Several years ago when a new family moved in next door she greeted them the first week with flowers. They were wonderful neighbors. We were sad when they moved away. But as they were leaving, the woman came to our door with a huge bunch of flowers. “These,” she said, “are in return for those you brought us when we moved. in. You made us feel so welcome and we never forgot.” The good news: the family that bought the house has turned out to be friendly, too.
I think it depends on your neighborhood, for sure. I guess I was surprised by the closed-off nature of ours because it *looks* so open. I suspect a lot of the people who live here are like us, transient with one foot out the door, and maybe reluctant to form close relationships because of that.
I know exactly what you mean. The only time we’ve spoken to our neighbors in the 9 months we’ve lived here is on Halloween night and one lone incident where I backed into a neighbor’s car. I’m from the south, so I am just not used to being so isolated with people all around me.
This has not been our experience in Urbana! Neighbors started introducing themselves the day we moved in 7 years ago, and though we’re not very social people we do know the names of most people on our block and count several as friends. We live in an older neighborhood, close to the university, where a lot of people walk or bike to get around. I wonder if that makes the difference?
Depends on your neighborhood, I think.
We live in the same neighborhood as you and have found our neighbors to be well, very neighborly. I don’t think it’s the neighborhood that is the problem but your exact neighbors and whether or not they are at the same place in life as you. In our little strip of houses we all have children who were born within 1-2 years of each other. Everyone has a friend, which means us parents had someone to commiserate with.
Our old neighborhood (near Parkland) was a lot like yours, Amy. In 9 years of living there, we had never been inside any of our neighbors’ houses. And in those 9 years, all the houses around us changed ownership at least once. Our new neighborhood is much different! We know all our neighbors’ names, and they know ours. It’s the kind of neighborhood where you live for decades. There aren’t a lot of families on our street, but I love it, and I love our neighbors.
Interesting… We also live in Urbana near the University but also very near the downtown area — pros and cons all around. We have rentals surrounding us so our neighbors rotate somewhat frequently, but we have a big yard and are within walking distance to everything. In the almost-seven years we’ve lived here we’ve tossed around the idea of moving into the heart of a “real” Urbana neighborhood, where we’d have neighbors to borrow a cup of sugar from, neighbors to tell our kids to run home for dinner — everything I had growing up in my close-knit neighborhood in Chicago. I have often wondered what exactly the neighbor-situation is in Urbana (b/c I don’t see people visiting on their porches, either) — so thanks for posting this as one experience.