Moved.

Both times my husband was deployed they mowed my lawn, had me over for dinner and were really there for me. They also sent boxes to my husband and emails to let him know how I was doing. We now live in Okinawa and still we stay in touch with our neighbors - they are truly like family. They are amazing people and I’ve tried to be that kind of neighbor since being here.

I don’t know whether this is the nicest, but it sure helped. A few weeks ago we had a strong wind storm (68 mph). Since we don’t have cable, we still have an antenna on our house and the wind caused us to lose PBS broadcasts and everything else had shadows or snow. Today the guy across the street went up on our roof and adjusted it for us. The wind had been so strong that it had blown our antenna 180 degrees off. Eureka! I can now see Charlie Rose and the News Hour and the cooking shows and, well, you get the picture and now we do too. CA

Picture the week before Christmas . . . with the preparations for the holiday going on in high fashion, for - as in large families, there seem one of the family members’ home designated as THE gathering place for celebration — and, guess what?, it was always mine. Some of you must know the feeling. You must. Tradition reigned in those fun days. . . and tradition always required mistletoe and many toasts. The elders liked only the best champagne - and so they should. The case of champagne was in from the car, but I was still alone and left to bring four bottles at a time downstairs in our tri—level home to chill in our overflow refrigerator. The carpets were newly cleaned, and a throw rug — you know, the kind with loops at the edges, had been placed to keep it clean before “the event”. And so, the first four bottles of champagne in my arms - and barefooted now - I took my first step onto the temporary rug. To catch a single toe in the rug loop seemed like a trick only a magician might do, but I did - and there was no one there to see the feat. The four bottles flew out of my hands, hit the bottom of the stairs, exploding on impact like a 4th of July festivities, with the champagne itself shooting to the ceiling and making the bottom of the bare floor now a swimming pool. But now, picture the heavy glass shards from 4 bottles, littering the wet floor, edges pointed up, just waiting for the grand finale: Joan, with toe still caught in the throw rug, pitching down the stairs and onto the shards. It must have been quite a sight. Not only did I feel my leg was broken, but the shards contributed to so much blood that it looked like a massacre. I was alone, I was badly hurt, I was soaked in champagne and blood, and I had to somehow get up to that kitchen phone. It took a while as I was crawling. 911 did not cross my mind to be honest. Instead, I began to make calls - to no avail - until I remembered that a writer-neighbor worked at home. “Could you take me to the hospital - but you must bring every towel in your house so I don’t ruin your car as I am soaked in champagne and bleeding from many wounds?” The poor man had no choice. I needed help fast. I grabbed everything I could to soak up the look of a massacre as he drove up. Towels were piled high on the car seat. I was dazed, scaring the man to death I know. The look of me scared even me. . so you can imagine how fast he began to drive when we reached the major highway. And if that wasn’t enough, sirens sounded and we were pulled aside for speeding. One look at my neighbor shaking - and the glance through the window at the amount of blood was enough. We now had an police escort with sirens blasting all the way to the hospital. It was assumed he was my husband and he took the role to move this along. In spite of his assurances that this had been a bizarre accident where I had fallen down a flight of stairs on top of the now broken bottles of Mumm’s I was carrying, they seemed to want to hear “that story” again and again. I tried to look proper, but I think now that they must hear every sort of story in an emergency room. And believe little. My neighbor now knew me more intimately than he had in the many years of our slight acquaintance, as my cuts were numerous, deep, and all over. My leg needed setting. The “fragrance” of the champagne “bath” had changed the antiseptic odor of the emergency room into one of a bar on a busy night. Hours later, Dean (for we knew each other very very well by this time) drove me home, appearing at least 10 years older than he had before. He had not yet seen the bloody massacre look that the kitchen and phone had assumed during my desperate tries for help earlier. His face became noticably paler at the sight. (So did mine!) The long and the short of the story is that I recovered. Professionals came in to return the home once again into a Christmas scene. But, as I look back, there should be some sort of happy ending here. And there was. The man I considered “the man down the street” no longer was “the neighbor”. Too much had transpired here. Instead he - and his wife - became some of our closest and dearest friends. And so they still are. The story became - in our home - “The Christmas Story”. And so it shall always remain.

The nicest thing a neighbor ever did for me…was MOVE. (Try having your bedroom window next to a backyard filled with unsupervised screaming children and yappy dogs, on a graveyard schedule that meant trying to get some shut-eye when children are just arriving home from school…) But seriously…I don’t communicate much with my neighbors. We try to mind our own business. Although this one lady across the street was always nice about bringing my little dog back to us when he would escape through a hole in the fence.

This conjured tons of memories, a steady stream of laughter, parties and convivial fun. We’ve had great neighbors and pools or lived by the beach, and also a ski place, so lots of activity. But I always loved going to my grandmother and aunt’s home nearby. My aunt was French and the French records were always on. Their Irish priest, Father Reilly, was frequently there with a glass of sherry in one hand, and my grandmother slipping money into the other. My favorite of their friends was Miss Colburn who was French. She married an American diplomat and they lived in France and Switzerland during WWII. She showed me her guest books that famous people had signed. She’d been thrown in jail overnight by the Nazis for fighting them when they came to their house and stole the valuables, and raped the housekeeper. And her main duty growing up, which she seemed to relish, was to tie little individual cloth bags on the fruit on the trees, and bring things in when they were perfectly ripe. Miss Colburn was tiny and slim with sparkly blue eyes and thick white hair she wore up in a soft chignon. She wore rose lipstick, and always a pastel cashmere skirt and matching twin set with pearls, matching earrings and classic Chanel low-heeled shoes and charm bracelets. She didn’t know how to cook, they’d had a cook throughout her marriage, and so she came to my grandmother’s almost every night for dinner, as did other friends. We’d have daquiris with the Charles Aznavour records going full tilt, and Miss Colburn would tell complex, incomprehensible war stories and we’d all laugh our heads off. With Father Reilly throwing in witticism in his thick brogue. Miss Colburn would say, “Water is to wash the feet,” then take a long drink of her daiquiri and waggle the empty tumbler at me for another. She’d get a little tipsy, and say, “Eeez good to bee ‘appy!” She always called me Suzette, and would lean over and pat my hand and say as if it were the greatest thing in the world. “You are just like a French girl.” A silly thing to love, but I did. She so merry at about 82. I was in my 20s and thought she was beautiful. I knew she really missed her husband because whenever “She” came on, she stopped talking, was a million miles away and listened hard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kl6u6rIbPo The nicest thing she did for me was to affirm my tremendous love of France, and to have the great memory of knowing her. She was really darling and a very good friend to my grandmother who really loved her.