SETTLING IN... or down, or something like that (Part 116g)

SETTLING IN... or down, or something like that (Part 116g)

Before going to bed we rearranged our “want/need” list yet again. We’d also created a “to do” list that was loosely connected to the other list. With the weather getting warmer a lot of the items on the “to do” list were in the yard or outside the house. The plans for the house showed a screened in porch but there were no screens. Then there was the formal garden that Elle had started to work on. She also wanted me to spade up some of the lawn out behind the garage so she could have a little vegetable garden like she had in the mobile home park. Speaking of the area behind the garage it was also where I’d parked the race car. Talk about a thorn in my side... because she used the wash line every day she had to walk past it and then she’d needle me about getting rid of it every night. The “to do” list also had me making a sand box for the kids to play in and reassembling the swing set. I also added cutting back the hedge that separated us from the neighbors. There was more but that was more than enough for me to handle. For me, the trimming of the hedge was a priority. It was impossible to ignore as you walked up the path to the house. The problem was that I didn’t know who owned it... me or the neighbor.

When John, the farmer neighbor, and his wife had given me some information about the neighbors to our East I was a bit concerned about them. He’d told me to contact his uncle who’d lived next to them for almost 20 years to get more detail. I’m not sure why I’d put it off but I had and now I had to. I’d only met his aunt and uncle at our house closing and she’d not said a word. But this time it was different. I was on the phone with her for almost a half hour. Elle kept walking past me with a quizzical look on her face. I will say this... I got the information I wanted and a lot that I didn’t.

The story I got was that the man had tried to get an exemption from the draft for WWII to take care of his parents and was turned down and was drafted. Before he shipped out he got married. He was wounded in Italy and had hoped to come home but they sent him back to the battlefront where he was very seriously wounded. Supposedly, a hand grenade exploded right next to him shattering his hip and leaving him with serious internal injuries. In the meantime, his wife had a baby girl. After returning home he, supposedly, found that the baby had been born over ten months after he shipped out. Unable to work and with no money he ended up living with his wife’s parents. When it came time for their child to go school they were told she wasn’t capable of keeping up and were told she should be institutionalized. At that time they called her condition mongolism (now called Down Syndrome). They refused to do it and she’d stayed at home ever since. I was told she was somewhere around 24 years old but was the equivalent of a 4 or 5 year old. Aside from that the lady told me that she’d had no problems with any of them and that she’d become fairly friendly with the woman. The daughter craved attention but was very shy since she never had any exposure to other people. In closing she said she’d only met the man a couple of times in the almost 20 years they’d lived next door and for my wife and I not to be too concerned.

On Saturday morning I started working on a project out on the lawn between the house and garage. That let me have a bit of a view of the neighbor’s yard through the area where the dead part of the hedge was located. I’d been there quite a while and was about to give up on that idea when I saw the girl heading towards their garage. I’d noticed that the mother would stand at the back door when the girl was at the wash line so I went over to the opening and stepped through. I waved at the woman and she, surprisingly, waved back. I made my way towards her and told her my name. She told me her name was Celia and then waved for her daughter to come over where we were standing. I was introduced to Sophie. She, as I expected, didn’t look at me but looked down at the ground. When I finally got a look at her face I could see a bit of the effects of her condition but it was no where near as bad as many others that I’d seen. It took some doing but she finally was coerced in to saying hello. She followed it up with a question about my girls names. After a few seconds she looked up at her mother and asked if she could play with them. I have to admit that I wasn’t all that happy hearing it but Celia told her that it would be up to them to decide. Then she headed for the back door and I finally got to ask about the hedge.

She smiled when I asked and said she didn’t know who owned it but she wasn't going to do anything with it. I told her that I wanted to trim it way down. I pointed at how high it had grown, probably 15 feet on average. She told me that it was probably a good idea. I stood there surveying the length of it and knew I had a real job on my hands. Back in my own yard I took a close look at the thickness of the shoots and realized I’d need to spend more money to buy a lopper as each shoot would need to be cut individually. I also remember thinking to myself that I would only tackle the area between the elm tree and the formal garden, about forty feet. As I stood there I also realized I’d need a taller step ladder... which meant more money out of my pocket. It just didn’t seem to end.