Conversations With My Neighbors

I have had a lot of neighbors (having moved 23 times, and all). From my grandparents, to an aspiring rapper who sang along to his IPod, quite loudly, on our shared balcony, I have sometimes loved, sometimes avoided the folks next door. Two neighbors stand out in my mind as being particularly wonderful.

The first was a neighbor in Connecticut, Ms. Gloria, who would babysit my sister and me on occasion. I was two at the time, so I don't remember all that much about her. I do remember her nightgowns, though, and that when we went to her house, she would share sweets with us. Then, there was Ms. Angela who lived next door in our first apartment in Rome. She was great. She would have the three of us over (we had a brother at this point), and would feed us gnocchi and tell us stories about La Befana (the terrifying, Italian alternative to Santa Claus, I guess? She would eat you if you had misbehaved that year). The common thread that unites my all-time favorite neighbors (except, for you, Mommee. You're my absolute favorite), are women who gave me food. Now that I am an adult, that is a goal I can live up to.

I really love my new house. I love that it stays warm without heaters, and that my bedroom fills with light in the daytime, and that we have a bookshelf made of crates in the living room. I could go without the tangerine walls (literally, every paintable wall in my home is painted tangerine), but I have really settled in here. I also really love my neighbors. A family lives above us with their two sons, Jorge, a ten year old, and Alex, a six year old. We've become friends.

We bonded over tea and cookies (Good Neighboring 101) while sitting on wrought iron chairs in our front patio. Since then, we've had a number of little chats on my way back home after work or after getting take-out from the enchilada place next door. Often, they will stop me with a question. It can be anything. Like:

Jorge: "Are there the same brands in the US as there are in Mexico?"

Me: "Well, some of them are different."

Jorge: "Like, is there Nike and Adidas?"

This past week, I was walking back from one of my outings. I had been battling a pesky illness for eight days, so I was exhausted. On that day, a friend of Jorge's was over. She stopped me to ask how I was doing.

Me: "I'm okay, I've been feeling pretty sick recently."

Her: "Are there diseases in the US?"

Me: "Diseases? Yes. There are diseases everywhere, just some of them are different in different countries."

Her: "What about chickenpox?"

One great thing about talking with kids is that anything is up for discussion. After her question about sickness, I couldn't help but wonder how one could imagine certain countries without illness. What if rich countries were able to buy health for their citizens? If that were the case, I could imagine being in that little girls' shoes thinking about the US as a illness-free utopia.

What other probing questions would come next?

Our conversation about chickenpox was followed by one on the different kinds of plants or trees that you might find in the US ("In Louisiana, we have trees that grow in the water." "What?!"). Then, we chatted about clothing stores that do and do not appear on the other side of the border. Our conversation veered back toward the stuff of blogs and intercultural discourse with a question about celebrations.

Her: "In the US you celebrate Halloween, right? You celebrate demons and witches."

Me: "Um, well..."

Her: "We have El Dia de Muertos. We just celebrate muertitos."

*Pause*

Jorge: "What other celebrations do you have?"

Me: "Well, we have our Independence Day. We celebrate it on the Fourth of July."

Jorge: "Independence? From where?

Me: "From England."

Jorge: "So you got yours from England, and we got ours from Spain."

I liked that thought. Yeah, we did both get our independence from European countries. It's something I don't usually think about. It's kind of nice to reflect on some of the many similarities between our countries instead of the divisions—

Jorge: "The other day in school we were learning about different countries. We learned about Japan and Europe—well, Europe is a continent, but there are different countries in it—and also the US."

Me: "That's great!"

Jorge: "Yes. But I think that you're different from other Americans."

*Pause*

Me: "How so?"

Jorge: Like, you don't think that you're superior? It's like, I'm here (touches the ground) and this other person thinks they're here (holds hand about a foot above the ground). Just like people like Donald Trump and others."

Me: "No, well, some people might think that... But I think it is bad, and that they are wrong."

Jorge: "It's just they might look at you, and if they see that you were born in another country, Japan, for example, they think you don't belong there. So, they want to send you back to your country of origin."

Dang.

So, here's the thing. If my neighbor was taught that all Americans think that they are superior to Mexicans in the same class where he is learning to discern cultural differences, that is messed up. This was one of my first thoughts.

But one of my other first thoughts had to do with the way that I learned simplified facts as a child. I don't know when I learned about some of the many issues that complicate the friendly-Pilgrim-and-Indian narrative of Thanksgiving. But I'm pretty sure that I learned a simple, squeaky clean version first. A version scrubbed free of nuance, complication, and messiness.

Is it okay to teach such simplistic narratives at all? If so, would such a description of the United States in 2017 be inaccurate? Are young Americans learning a conflicting, simple narrative about "job-stealing" Mexicans? Has that narrative grown up without ever getting nuanced, and become true to not-so-young Americans today?

Frankly, I don't know. What I do know is that for my neighbor, meeting me added a shade of complexity to the narrative that he learned somewhere ("You're different from...").

I do have a problem with the "No, but I have a (insert minority here) friend!" as a response to allegations of disrespect or stereotyping. But I also have seen how learning from people different than yourself, loving them, being their neighbor, and allowing interpersonal relationships to inform your understanding of complicated issues like nationality, ethnicity, or religion can break down the kind of lies that divide us.

There are so many falsehoods that, while simple, may eliminate the possibility for connection with billions of neighbors. The truth (here, and as it is in infinitely many cases) may just set us free from those lies.

My neighbor is willing to allow the insight he gained from meeting and befriending another to inform and even change his worldview. I think that if we all allowed the truths that we learn by loving other people, different people, we'd have no problem distinguishing sparkly, misleading narratives from the real, albeit complicated ones. There's a real problem, then, if we never build those bridges or try to get at the truth of things.

As I walked away from this conversation with my delightful new neighbors, Alex, the six year old, stopped me.

"Wait," he said, in a serious tone, "how do you say 'casa' in English?"

My sadness and disappointment were painlessly erased, if only temporarily.

“House,” I smiled, “‘Casa' is ‘house.'"