Wednesday, May 31, 2017

The Spectacular Neighbors






If I am to be honest, I venture as we peel away from our fantasies, I really don’t care that much for the perfect house. Sure, it would be nice, but what REALLY matters to me is the people who live inside.  And the people I would LOVE to be my neighbors are the ones on the other side of the lake.

Which ones? Anna is as much, or perhaps even more intrigued now by the people I want for my neighbors.

You know, the ones who decorate their house for Christmas and Easter… and Hal…

Oh, YES! A sand hill crane swoops up  into the air at the sound of her scream. Can you imagine being THEIR neighbors???!!!

No! But that would be incredible….

We walk in silence for a bit, each reflecting on what it would be like to know the people who decorate their house like that for the holidays.

Clearly they are soooo creative.

Clearly they are off-the-charts fun.

They are sweep-me-off-my-feet imaginative, extravagantly ingenious, and flamboyantly artistic. 

Their house decorations for holidays are world-class theme park worthy, and yet tasteful, although I know this sounds like an oxymoron. 

… To have them as my neighbors…

I would love to get inside their head… I muse…

I would love to get inside their storage shed!

We both laugh at the thought of space it would take to store the decorations, the logistical nightmare of putting on a show like that and the impracticality of such family enterprise.

Where do they keep all that stuff???? Anna has always been the more sensible one.  Man, it must be exhausting to put on such a spectacular show every time...

Hmmm, I never thought of that.

I never thought what would really be like to live next-door to people who always have to go all out, not just big but GIGANTIC… not just good but AWESOME….

For whom a simply good is never quite good enough.

The relentless, maybe internal maybe external pressure to outdo themselves each time, year after year… 

Are they ever able to descend?

Are they ever able to shrink themselves to small? 

Can they handle being... invisible? 

Can they tolerate the mundane, ordinary grayish days... ?

Or do they always have to command the stage and everyone’s attention by spectacular?… 

On second thought,… I start, but before I am able to finish, both of us are stopped in our tracks. 

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