For sale
My next-door neighbor is selling her house.
Well, she’s really not my neighbor anymore, she owns the house next to my parents’ house. And she’s lived there, been my parents’ neighbor, since the houses were built in 1968.
There are two suburban counties here on Long Island, Nassau County is closer to the city, Suffolk further east. In the late 1960’s there was a housing boom in western Suffolk County. A developer would buy acres of land, build model houses, and start selling. If you liked the model, you’d buy a plot of land and watch the developer build your house. So of course the community in the development was mostly families with young children. My family had outgrown our house in Nassau County, and so my parents bought a larger house in Suffolk.
My parents were originally friends with the couple next door, until a dispute about the property line ruined the relationship. But we always kept up with the neighbors’ major life events, like when the husband died of a heart attack. Like when their only son moved out to start a life and a family of his own.
So of course I looked at the real estate ad, looked at the series of photos from inside the house. It’s been decades since I was inside the house and I was curious. It was a little disconcerting. My neighbor chose the same house model as my parents, but as a mirror-image. When you walk into my parents’ house, you’re in a center hall, with the living room to your left and the dining room to your right. In my neighbor’s house, the dining room is to the left, the living room to the right. And my neighbor hasn’t ready made changes to the house over the years, just updated the appliances, painted the walls … it felt like stepping through a mirror and at the same time traveling back in time …
My neighbor must be in her late 80’s or early 90’s now. It’s time to move out of that huge old house. But still …
Yeah, nothing lasts forever, does it.
My childhood neighborhood had the same thing, houses that had mirror image floorplans. We knew which houses were the same and which were different. That's because we were in and out of the neighbors' houses at that time. That was like a lifetime ago...
ReplyDeleteI am curious to see inside houses for sale too! My childhood home was sold after my mother died (my brothers and I sold it), and last year it sold again. It had been completely redone inside and out. It was depressing. Honestly, in now way would I have known it was the same house. The trees were gone. Somehow they leveled the lot that was terraced. Nothing remained outside, and inside was completely unrecognizable. They must have put in a good couple hundred thousand (knowing how much just kitchen remodels are). None of the houses there were built the same, my neighborhood now alternate models.
ReplyDeleteMy mother in law lived in her new development house for some 50 years. She passed in 2018 but her next door neighbor, who is 91 now, still lives next door and it's just so strange to visit her (we last visited in 2021) and see strangers in my husband's childhood home. I've known the neighbor since 1971 - she's is from the same NYC borough as I am so we have that in common, too. But yes, life goes on. Neighbor/friend has increasing medical issues. It's probably just a matter of time....Alana ramblinwitham.blogspot.com
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