Neighbors

9/25/00

I have the nicest neighbors. Today I got home from another long day in the field - I'm harvesting an experiment - and found that my landlady had done two loads of laundry for me.

Can you believe that? I left my dirty clothes in the basement laundry room yesterday morning, hoping against hope that I would have a moment to go back and finish it, and ended up coming back for it tonight.

It got left by the wayside along with everything else that's not the harvest.

Well, I got home tonight all filthy, stinking, and covered with mud - Joel said I looked like a homeless person - and went downstairs to haul the bag of dirty clothes back upstairs, evidence of my losing battle against entropy.

But instead of a bag of dirty laundry, I found a pile of neatly folded clothes, with the bag folded on top. I cannot begin to tell you how thankful I felt.

I knew that someone in my building had just washed and dried my husband's and my dirty clothes, and had gone to the trouble of folding them - anonymously!

I was thunderstruck. Not only did today's work bring me within reach of the timely end of the harvest - before the frost destroys my crops, that is - but an extremely kind act took care of one of the many chores that I've been unable to do for about two weeks now.

Needless to say, I left a note.

The note that I left went over many of the points covered above, but in an infinitely gushier tone.

THANK YOUs were written in capitals, emphatic apologies were offered for leaving my clothes in the basement for two days, excuses were both furnished and decried.

I almost signed the note "your humble servant," but felt that might be going a little too far. I settled on "SINCERELY," in caps and underlined so that the emphasis would be unmistakable.

A few minutes later, after getting into my apartment and setting the clothes down in the bedroom, the phone rang.

It was my landlady, Bonnie, saying she had just gotten my note.

Bonnie is a nice person, but very direct, and I expected that she might want to ask me not to leave my clothes downstairs if I can't wash them that day, or something like that.

On the contrary. She told me that she knew what it was like to work and run a household, and that anytime she could help she was more than happy to do so.

If I needed to do a couple of loads but didn't have the time, she said, all I needed to do was leave them downstairs and call her to let her know.

On second thought, she added, I should just ring upstairs to her apartment once, so my name would appear on the caller ID, and she would know that there was laundry waiting downstairs. This way I wouldn't pay for the call. How nice is that? I mean, in this day and age, in the middle of the city, such a simple, helpful act.

Once when Joel and I were on vacation, we had a flat tire outside of Fargo, North Dakota.

A highway patrolman stopped to see what was the matter, and then proceeded to change our tire for us. He wouldn't let us do it ourselves, and insisted that we sit in the squad car with the A/C on to get away from the sci-fi quantity mosquitoes.

There was a surreal quality to the whole experience - this kind of thing was unimaginable in Chicago, not because there are, um, few nice police officers, but because it just isn't done.

Since then, we tell this story to incredulous friends here in the city, and pronounce that people in North Dakota must simply be nicer than people in Chicago, or any city.

After today, I'm beginning to wonder if that is true.

Personal musings:

Wilderness: Dreams of living in the wild persist and change.

All grown up: At 12 I looked like I was 20, at 24 I looked 15.

Altruism: Can you ever repay the kindness of a stranger?

Photos in a box: A package from my brother turned my memories of childhood upside down.

Short story long: How to lengthen a narrative in a few easy steps.

Writing: Going the distance to find things to write about.

Neighbors: An amazing account of urban generosity.

Snacking: The angst of a healthy diet.

Thoughts on spiritual matters:

Subway preachers: Transcendence on the Red Line.

Thoughts in the Kingdom: How do you keep your mind in heaven and your heart in the world?

After September 11: Response to an attack on a mosque in Bridgeview, Ill., on September 12.