Susan's Scribblings the Blog

The third “For Sale” sign went up in a house next to mine the other day. Suddenly the block is going to change, and people I have known for a long time are disappearing. I have lived on the same street for over 50 years (give or take a few short stints away), and I have seen it happen, but it seems to be happening faster now.

Of course I am not the longest-lived resident of the block, but only when you see advance notice of more change do you get a chance to think about it in depth from all the time you have spent there. There were people who were kind, and those who kept to themselves. Some never felt welcome and didn’t help us feel like we belonged, while others strove to keep life on a pleasant border between wonderfully outgoing and peacefully civil. When I first arrived with my parents, people stayed in one place a long time, but now frequent moves are not considered unusual, so a few new people have only stayed a short while.

I saw the youth of my generation–both younger and older than me– make their way through life on the block, and they have moved away. The elderly have died, and the middle-aged or young upstarts have sought different environments, either upscale or downsized. There have been some financial hardships and difficult divorces along the way, all with their own causes and consequences. Moving is usually one of the consequences.

So now I wonder what the future of the block will be. Who will fill in the gaps by moving in and finding their place in the whole? I will wait and see who paints or fences or landscapes, and who smiles en route to their car in the morning or slips out to pull third shift duty under the cover of the moon when nobody is around to see them. Will there be new children, or adults of an age to whom we all can relate?

When the sale signs come down and the moving vans pull away, it will all begin again with new people mingling with the old, not only in age but in dynamics, emotions and ideas. It will be like a mystery prize behind a curtain, and I’m holding my breath for it to be revealed.