Moving On

I moved to Kansas City in 2018. I should say we but, I haven’t introduced my wife to this blog. Her name is Sara and if you want to know all about her check out her blog. It is an unflinching look at her life, her spirit, and how her past and present are taking their toll or giving her all the blessings. It just depends on how you take it.

So, we moved to KC in 2018. Yeah, right on time to get settled in for the pandemic. By the time of lockdown I’d already chewed through two meaningless jobs. Probably the only thing I did during that time of any consequence was volunteering for a local charity that I won’t name. When I first approached them I was looking for something to do with my time that seemed a little more meaningful than providing customer service to people with more money than brains. With this charity I spent four or five hours every Saturday morning tending plants at the charity’s greenhouses aimed at resolving one of Kansas City’s many food deserts or working on one of their many residential properties they maintained for the low income residents of that neighborhood. 

After we’d been in KC for a year our lease was up and we were a little sick of living in a multifloored apartment building in a faceless, midtown neighborhood. Instead of signing up for another year there, I approached the owner of the charity. I’d come to like the neighborhood in northeast KC that they served and I knew that they had a few vacant properties to sell or rent. We struck a deal and moved into a tiny little house about five blocks away from the charity’s headquarters. After a year of apartment living we suddenly had a yard, a washer and dryer right there where we kept our boots and bikes instead of a laundromat 2 miles away, four unshared walls, and our very own driveway.

Now, I’m not the best neighbor you could imagine. I’m quiet, at least I think I am. I can only guess but, I imagine that from other’s perspective I can seem secretive or maybe even suspect. Suspect of what, I don’t know. I just know that when I try to withdraw and not offend in most situations this tactic backfires and I become a subject of some attention and negative speculation. The more I withdraw, the more I seem to be up to something.

To be a neighbor, one must exist in a neighborhood. This neighborhood was largely hispanic. Sara and I thought that we could fit in by quietly living our little lives and doing our best to not interfere. Our neighbors, on the other hand, were joyously loud and involved in each other’s lives. Brothers got brothers places to live nearby, children grew up and moved into the house on the next corner. Birthdays, especially those of young girls, were huge affairs that involved huge cookouts with hired musicians, fireworks, light displays, and dancing long into the night. This was before marijuana was widely legal and available in Missouri. Any holiday, be it secular or Catholic, meant that the streets in our little part of the world were heavy with the smell of pot. I swore that on some occasions I could literally see a haze of the sweet smoke traveling up and down the streets like a silent specter.

Sara and I were living our best lives then. She had a job at a dog day care, the perfect nexus of her biggest passion and her need of a job. She would often come home with tales of this or that delightful misadventure with her dogs. I found a job working from home for a company that provided medical supplies for folks on medicare. In the mornings I was riding my bike regularly, striving to add one more mile to yesterday’s ride. Mind you, we were still drinking like fishes and it was from this house that I would enjoy the first of what would turn out to be many hospital visits due to my internal organs revolting to the booze. I’ll just say that Sara and the teams of EMTs that she beckoned on my behalf saved my life more than a few times. If hospitals had punch cards I’d be owed a free sandwich by now. We don’t need to dwell on that now.

By the time the pandemic was real we were firmly nestled in our bungalow. I had a vegetable garden in the back and flowers in the front. Predictably, our neighbors had begun to dislike us. Well, they’d begun to dislike me. They probably wondered why such a sweet women as Sara would put up with an asshole like me. I’m not sure I have a healthy enough self-perspective to give you an honest assessment of my role. Let’s just say that none of us behaved well and, by the time we left, everyone was glad to see the back of me.

Here’s one little scrap that doesn’t have much to do with me: That charity I mentioned above was a bit rudderless. What had started as a well meaning food charity slowly began making of its owner a minor real estate baron in that low income neighborhood. I don’t have many details. It seems that the house-flipping scheme - let’s admit that’s what it was - was just supposed to be a side thing to underpin the food charity. In time, the housing arm began to demand more and more the owner’s attention. It all ended after a dramatic weekend where half a dozen cop cars with lights whirling surrounded the owner’s comparatively grand house in the neighborhood. We never knew what happened but, several months later I found a piece written by the owner after the dissolution of the charity. It didn’t mention the charity; it was a Kaczynskiesque screed about the powers that be and the end of our socio-economic system. 

The pandemic was hard on us all.

Now, we live in another apartment in North Kansas City. This one is much more livable. We’re on the ground floor with a decent patio and laundry just one floor downstairs. Most of our neighbors are as reclusive as us so everyone happily minds their own business.