Tag / neighbor

by Kelly Mattei

Be a Good Memory

Be a good memory.

Our daughter had her junior prom last weekend. Yep, even in the pandemic, her school found a way to pull it off. It was outside on one of the athletic fields, but in the pictures, it appears to have been beautiful. Lights were strung tent-style across the field, and a live band played in an area overlooking the field. The prom-goers all wore sneakers, and from what I’ve heard, everyone was pretty happy to be together at a real event.

If you have a teenager, you know they do things a little differently than we did back in the 1980s. Now, the girls gather at one place to get dressed together. And then they gather with their dates at a photo location…sometimes a park, country club, or someone’s really beautiful yard. Parents gather to take photos, and then the prom-goers go to dinner somewhere before going to the actual prom. In truth, the actual prom seems to be the least exciting part of the evening. That’s not a slam on our school. I hear it from kids everywhere…all over the country. They say the prom is the reason for getting dressed up, but the fun part is the before and after.

Because, yes…there’s an “after.”

This year, some of our daughter’s friends and their dates came to our house after prom to hang out in the game room together. When I told my husband we would be hosting, he was not a happy man. He is a man who likes his routine, and that includes going to bed before midnight. He actually said to me, “They’ll be gone before midnight, right?” Ummm…no. I had to explain to him that, no, on prom night, all bets are off on curfew. Again, he was not happy. Clearly, he doesn’t remember his youth as well as I remember mine. I suggested he go to a hotel, and he looked at me like I had fourteen eyes.

Lucky for me, later that day, we saw one of our neighbors, a mother of four. She has three grown children (all out of college, and two of them are married) and a fourteen-yr-old. She has seen it all. And for years, teenagers were in and out of her house at all hours of the day and night. My husband was standing there when I told the neighbor about his apprehension about the party, and she had the perfect response. She said, “We used to host those parties when our kids were in high school, and now I love it when I’m at weddings and baby showers for their friends, and the friends say to me, ‘My best memories from high school were at your house.'” I turned to my husband and said, “See? We want to be a good memory for these kids!”

What could he say to that? It was at that moment that he agreed it was OK to have them over after prom. After some prodding by me, he also decided it would be a good idea for him to check into a local hotel for the night. If he had stayed home, he would have been “in my ear” the whole time, trying to get me to go check on the kids every half hour. I was not going to do that…no way, no how.

Prom night came, and our daughter went over to a friend’s house to get dressed with friends. Later, I rode to the friend’s house with another mom to take pictures of all the prom couples. After getting some pics, we all left, and they had dinner before going to prom. By the time they arrived at our house after prom at around 11pm, I had pizzas, cheesy bread sticks, and desserts waiting for them in the game room. All went well. I cooked breakfast for them in the wee hours of the morning, and I finally got to bed around 4am…but I was happy.

The next day, after everyone left, my husband returned home from the hotel, asking how the night had gone. I told him all about it, and I thanked him for letting the kids come to our house. I thanked him for letting our house “be a good memory” for these kids.

I hope that one day, when I’m attending the weddings and baby showers of these same kids, they will turn to me and say, “Some of our best memories from high school are from your house.”

by Kelly Mattei

Facebook Is Like A Nosey Neighbor

Y’all know I love Facebook. I don’t really think it’s like a nosey neighbor. Heck, you don’t have to be nosey to see details of my life on Facebook…I’m putting them out there myself.

But yesterday, my clever, witty friend, Mary Ann, posted this on Facebook:

Facebook is like having nosey neighbors who don’t really like you. They just stay connected to look over the fence and see what you’re doing.

Before I continue, I must say I prefer it to be spelled “nosy,” so that’s how it will be spelled from here on in this piece.

It wasn’t Mary Ann’s original creation. She got it from a site called Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons. First of all, it made me laugh, and then it made me think. Aren’t we all peering through a window or over a fence into each other’s lives on Facebook? The difference between looking over a fence or peering into a window and Facebook, though, is that, on social media, we control what other people see about our lives. If you have a peeping Tom or a nosy neighbor, you don’t always know what they see, and you can’t always control it.

About ten years ago, a friend (I’m keeping her name private, to protect the innocent) moved to a new house. She left behind some beloved neighbors, and when she settled into her new home, she discovered her new next-door neighbor was Gladys Kravitz. If you don’t know who Gladys Kravitz is, you never watched the television show, Bewitched. On the show, Mrs. Kravitz was the ultimate nosy neighbor. So my friend’s neighbor wasn’t actually Gladys Kravitz, but she was a real-life, 21st century version of her.

They had a privacy fence between the backyards of the two houses, and occasionally, when my friend was outside, she would catch a glimpse of “Mrs. Kravitz” peering over the fence or between the slats. One day, she called me and said, “I wish I could think of something to shock her.” Well, she had come to the right friend! It became my mission to find the perfect thing to shock Mrs. Kravitz. Sure, we could have gone with a life-size nude statue. But that would have been a little heavy…and probably expensive. Instead, we devised a plan.

My friend went to her local discount store and purchased a rotary clothesline, putting it up in her backyard. (You can purchase them at Amazon here.)I went online to search for the perfect thing to hang on it. I knew I’d be able to find it somewhere, because years before, my brother had caught some that were tossed from a Mardi Gras float in Mobile. After some searching, I found it, ordered it, and had it shipped to my friend.

When she received the package, she called me, laughing hysterically. I said, “Go hang them up! Hurry! I want Gladys Kravitz to see them the next time she looks over there! But you have to sit outside till you get her reaction.”

And she did. She walked outside, and on the clothesline, she hung up the most gigantic pair of red panties one could ever imagine…so big that no one could possibly wear them.

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She called me and said, “It’s done! Those panties look like a big ol’ butt-shaped flag flapping in the breeze!” And she waited. After an hour or so, she heard Gladys Kravitz walk out her back door. Mrs. Kravitz was talking on the phone as she wandered around her yard. My friend was sitting out of sight, but she called me as soon as she heard Mrs. Kravitz. After a few minutes, she knew Mrs. Kravitz had peeked over the fence, because she heard her say to whoever was on the other end of the phone line, “My word! You wouldn’t believe what’s hanging in my crazy neighbor’s yard!”

We laughed and laughed, even though my friend had to keep down the volume of her laughter. I remember her whispering, “I’m the crazy neighbor! I always wanted to be the crazy neighbor!” But Mrs. Kravitz had no idea those gigantic panties had been hung outside for her viewing pleasure. My friend eventually took down the panties, but she left them up long enough for Mrs. Kravitz to get angry about them. She knew she was angry, because she would hear her grumbling through the fence. Unfortunately, this was before every cell phone in America was a smart phone, so there is no photographic evidence.

When I saw Mary Ann’s post about how Facebook is like having nosy neighbors, I responded, “The key lies in giving them PLENTY to look at! You wanna peek over the fence? I’ll give you a reason to peek over the fence!”

But of course, I love Facebook. I don’t think of my Facebook friends as nosy neighbors. I love that they share their lives with me, and I love sharing mine too. After all, when I run into them, we don’t have to do the cocktail party chat. We can converse about real life…or at least the life we put on Facebook. And we can laugh about our nosy neighbors!

***If you have a nosy neighbor you’d like to shock, you can purchase Big Momma Panties at Amazon.com here.***

 

 

 

 

 

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by Kelly Mattei

Behind That White Picket Fence

When my daddy was sick and dying of pancreatic cancer in 2006, I learned a lot.

One thing I learned is that we never really know what someone is going through. I remember leaving my parents’ house one evening after spending time with them when he was sick. They lived in a traditional southern style home with a white picket fence. Yep, a white picket fence.

On the outside, everything appeared to be normal…quiet, peaceful. On the inside of that house, it was anything but normal. I remember thinking, “People driving by have no idea how sad things are inside my parents’ house right now.”

It made me think. It made me look at people differently.

As I drove out of their neighborhood that evening, I looked at each house I passed and wondered if everything was OK. I wondered if there was anyone else experiencing the sadness we were experiencing. Were the people in the corner house feeling OK? Was anyone lying in the floor of their house waiting for help? Were people crying around a dinner table because of illness or divorce? Were any of the neighbors having financial problems?

Have you ever been in a restaurant and received terrible service? It’s human nature for us to think, “What a lousy waiter.” But in reality, that waiter might be a great waiter who is going through a terrible time. We don’t know what kind of problems he may have at home. We don’t know if his wife or child might have a terminal illness. We don’t know if he can’t pay his bills. We don’t know if he is dying.

I remember when my daddy first started having symptoms in mid 2005. He was experiencing rapid, unexplained weight loss, which we attributed to the horrible hip pain he had been having. We had no idea it was pancreatic cancer, but we knew something was wrong.

At the same time, my maternal grandmother was in the early stages of dementia, and my mother was having to drive back and forth from the Mobile, Alabama, area to Birmingham, five hours each way, to get her evaluated and help get her settled in an assisted living facility. Daddy couldn’t go with her, because he wasn’t able to sit in the car for that long.

No one had any idea.

That September, right in the middle of all this, my husband’s beloved grandmother died. The funeral was in Mobile. The day before the funeral, my mother had to go back to Birmingham, to meet with medical professionals about my grandmother’s care and to get the house locked up. It couldn’t wait. On the same day, my daddy had to get an epidural for the hip pain. It was a terrible time for my husband’s family, and in a different way, a terrible time for my family.

My parents were very private people, so very few people knew what they were going through.

With Mother out of town, my daddy was incapacitated because of the epidural and his hip problems. He was in terrible pain. There was no way I could ask him to keep a two-yr-old during the funeral, and there was no way he or my mother could attend. They said prayers for my husband and his family, but their own issues were big…bigger than anyone outside the family knew.

I’m sure there were some people who thought they should have been there or that they should have kept our daughter while we went to the funeral, but again…you never know what someone else is going through. One person even mentioned it. I just thought, “Bless his heart…he has no idea.” My parents were dealing with two different major health crises in two different cities. Even though we didn’t know the extent of my daddy’s illness, we knew something was wrong. And my grandmother, well, that was just sad. My poor mother was exhausted from driving back and forth…taking care of people at both ends of the state. There was no way my parents could have done anything differently than what they did.

As very private people, my parents would not have wanted me to tell anyone what they were dealing with, but it was a very difficult time.

No one could have known.

When my daughter was starting first grade, we had a “meet the teacher” day. All the parents gathered in the classroom. The teacher announced she would need a room mother for the school year. My friend whose child was also in the class turned to me and said, “You should do that!”

Unbeknownst to her, my husband was scheduled for brain surgery that September. I said, “Oh, I can’t. My husband is having brain surgery soon.” She was horrified. She’d had no idea, because no matter what my family was going through, we had to continue putting one foot in front of the other. I had been living life as usual, but something big was looming over our family. Of course, I told her not to be horrified, because we hadn’t told a lot of people.

This past December, when my mother died, I kept it quiet for a while in Charlotte, because I needed to process it emotionally before dealing with it publicly. I remember going to a meeting at school in early January and running into a friend. I saw her and said, “I have something to tell you, and when I say it, I need you to not ask questions and immediately change the subject.” I didn’t want to cry in public, and I didn’t want to make a scene.

She handled it perfectly. I said, “My mother died at the end of December.” She did exactly as I asked and immediately asked me about something else. Yay! Lots of people would have thought it was strange behavior, but she knew what I needed. I needed to keep going.

That friend and I have known each other for ten years, and until I told her, she didn’t know what was going on with me.

We really never know, do we? Maybe we should take that into consideration when someone forgets to meet us somewhere or forgets to return a call. Maybe that terrible waiter just needs someone to be kind to him.

How many times have you had a friend tell you they were getting divorced, but you had no idea there was a problem in their marriage? I’ve had two friends surprise me with this news in just the past few years, and I actually consider myself to be a pretty darn perceptive person. These are friends I saw regularly at least a few times a month, and I had no clue anything was wrong.

Often, we keep our private lives just that…private.

I know that after my mother died, I dropped out of life for a month. I gave myself permission to stay home, sit in bed, and do nothing for a month. On February 1, I rejoined the living. During the month of January, lots of people still had no idea what was going on in my life. I was grieving my mother, but I wanted to do it privately.

So, as you go through your day, try to remember that lots of people are dealing with terrible things…every day…everywhere. It might be your neighbor who was just diagnosed with cancer. It might be your child’s teacher who has been cranky lately, because her husband lost his job. It might be your friend who hasn’t told you she’s having marital problems.

Often, there are things we do not know. Let’s try to give people the benefit of the doubt.