When we moved in to our current home in 2014, our next door neighbors were a family with kids close in age to our own kids. They were excited for another family with kids to move in. I went to their younger son’s first birthday party and watched him smear cake on his face with his chubby, dimpled hands as my 2-year-old toddled around their living room. Their older son, then 6, and my older daughter, then 7, rode bikes around the block and opened a short-lived lemonade stand. The kids went trick-or-treating together. We staked signs in our respective yards about respective open houses for their respective schools. We talked about plans for summer camp and upcoming vacations. This went on for a few years.
And then they moved. It happens. There was a job offer too good to refuse in a city many miles away. The schools were better. The cost of living was cheaper. It wasn’t in a hurricane zone. We understood. We were sad, of course, but we absolutely understood. The neighborhood threw them a going-away party, and we waved at the moving truck as it drove away.
And then we waited, just like they had waited while our house was on the market. Maybe another family would move in with kids, and we would make friends with them, just as they had made friends with us. Maybe not, though. Maybe it would be a childless couple who would complain about how messy our front porch looked, strewn with kids’ toys and shoes kicked off by the door. Maybe it would be someone with a dozen barking dogs. Maybe it would be a bunch of noisy but friendly college kids – we aren’t that far from Tulane and Loyola. Or maybe it would be a lovely couple just starting a family with a mom pregnant with a baby my older kid could one day babysit. There were so many possibilities, good and bad.
In the end, when it sold, it was none of those things. And it was all of those things.
It became a short-term rental. So we have a revolving door of neighbors, some lovely, some obnoxious, all temporary.
We enjoyed meeting the couple visiting from Orlando, Fla., to mark their 15th anniversary. It was fun getting to know the family that stayed there for a month while their kitchen was being renovated.
But the bachelor party that got into a drunken fight in our driveway was less welcome, and we had to call the police because we weren’t sure if it would escalate beyond fisticuffs. And the group of women visiting from Michigan to celebrate a birthday got so drunk that they themselves called 911 to make sure no one was going to die of alcohol poisoning, waking most of the block up when the fire truck and ambulance arrived at 3 a.m. (Thankfully, everyone was OK.)Â
The loud music and the streets clogged with out-of-state cars are just another weekend now, and if we don’t like it, at least we know it is only for a few days.
But still. Drunk and rowdy tourists are nothing new, and in fact, they are our lifeblood as a city. However, they used to be confined to the French Quarter. Now they are in our neighborhood, where we are trying to raise our kids, cook our dinners, bicker with our spouses, put out our recycling, and park our own cars.
The house next door is a lot of things now. There are parties and tourists and music and fun and a whole lot of food deliveries.
But mostly, I miss when there was a family.
