Meet the neighbors

Perhaps we've been a little spoiled living these past seven months in what could possibly be the quietest corner of the city. Or was the quietest corner of the city until last week.

Last week, the condo downstairs became suddenly, and without warning, occupied. The condo that has been blissfully unoccupied for several years and, I'm not going to lie, I worked to keep that way. Every time there I could hear the real estate agent showing the place, I put my stealthiest instruments to work, walking (no, not thunderously, merely confidently) around and around and around my place in heels. Given that my place is covered in hardwood flooring and is in a vintage building, there's no doubt my passive aggressive protests were heard.

I know, it doesn't sound good. And not just me kah-lump-kah-lump-kahhhh-lumping from kitchen to desk to bedroom to kitchen again. But also the idea that I was trying to ward off potential buyers and renters of a condo that's been sadly on the market for two years. WWJSD? -- What in the world would Jessica Simpson do if she knewhow I was manipulating her footwear for such selfish, unseemly reasons?!

Still, I panicked every time I heard the familiar voice
of the agent rise up from the first floor to the silence in our second
floor home. It stirred up memories of past neighbor who weighed a
buck-ten at the most and walked through the apartment overhead like
they had concrete blocks tied to his feet, or another who pounded on
his ceiling every time the television in my apartment upstairs was on
at all (forget turned up even the eensiest bit past mute). It made me
cringe to think about how our nice little rhythm would change, may
interrupt singing our way down the front staircase, racing back up in
later in the afternoon and falling asleep in a blissful pocket of quiet
that's protected from all the normal sounds of the city surrounding us.




Maybe it's because we escaped so much literal and figurative noise when
we moved here that I was really afraid of any invasion on the calm
we've built.



None of that really matters, though, because at 9 p.m. last Wednesday
(NINE AT NIGHT! Who moves at NINE AT NIGHT?), new neighbors came
clomping, stomping, banging, yelling their way in. They turned the
television on while they unloaded the van outside and the telenovela that was playing echoed in the empty place so loudly that Lil E and I could make out every word.



Lil E was distraught about the noises he was sure indicated monsters
were moving in downstairs and I was irritated that it must mean another
young yuppie couple had torn into the neighborhood and would probably
take up all the ample street parking with their three hybrid SUVs.



We couldn't have been more wrong. Although I had to go down and ask the
friends helping our new neighbors to kindly turn down the television
since a small child was now way past his bedtime, I didn't meet the
people living there until a few days later. I heard them before I met
them, though, and so I knew by the running that there were kids.



I breathed deeply. Hey, I have a kid and he runs. What can I expect? Not to get that back from the people downstairs? 



I just didn't find out until last weekend that there would be three small children, a dad and trombone practice.



Yes, one of those running, yelling, apparently bouncing kids also needs
to practice trombone every evening. For fifteen of the loudest, most
agonizing minutes of all time.



The dad, who is nice and thoughtful and completely unaware of how sound
travels in buildings made prettier with hardwood floors and high
ceilings, kindly asked if it would be OK for his boy to practice his
horn-induced headaches as long as it was a set time and before bedtime.
How could I say no? I'm not the early childhood musical education
gendarme, for God's sake.



I have no idea how the dad, his three kids and all that energy fits
into the condo below us. And I pray that we will stop hearing the
squeals just as we once learned to tune out the el and the bird that
lived on my bedroom windowsill and the family who I swear bowled in the
apartment downstairs in other homes. In the meantime, I will try -- oh,
how I will try -- to be grateful for the months that we had and for the
split-custody situation the noisemakers downstairs have, giving Lil E
and me little breaks in the tromboning (theirs) and stomping platforms
(mine).