What I Want

Dear Readers,

What I want is a house in the suburbs. A cheap one. Maybe one that’s been foreclosed. A nice one. 4 bedrooms. 2 or more bathrooms. A front yard. A back yard. A mailbox at the end of the driveway. A garage, where I’ll keep a few greasy tools I don’t know how to use. I don’t want to be under the jurisdiction of some psychotic Home Owner’s Association, but a mild Home Owner’s Association would be OK. Nice neighbors. A few neighbors I want to spend time with, and a few neighbors I want to avoid and complain about. A few nosy neighbors, who mean well. A few social organizers, who are always inviting people to get-togethers, always gossiping. I’ll arrive and depart when the social-organizing, gossiping neighbors are talking, arrive and depart. And when they talk to me, I’ll listen for a while to their conversation, contentedly, and smile. I’ll nod, and say, “How about that?”

It’ll be nice to live in the suburbs where a few of the housewives around town will organize a book club, meet while the men are away, neglect their chores, and eventually get accused of witchcraft.

It’d be nice to have a park nearby. A peaceful neighborhood, that’s what I want, where families and friends take walks together around the neighborhood in peace. I want to live within walking or bicycling distance from the high school where I’ll teach.

And people will know me around there. I’ll sit on the front porch, or the front lawn, or the driveway if there isn’t a porch, and the neighbors will say “hi” and I’ll say “hi” as they walk by, and people will know who I am. And one of the neighbors will lose his job and have to move his family to live in a different part of the state. And we’ll all be sad. And a different family in the neighborhood will have their aging mother move in with them, and she’ll die after a few months, and we’ll all be sad again, because we knew her, and she was nice, and she lived in the neighborhood. And another neighbor will get in the newspaper, and I’ll say, as the neighbor walks by, “Hey, I saw you in the paper.” And they’ll say, “Yep.”

I also want free time for hobbies. Lots of free time to spend with my wife and kids. Time off from work to write poetry, write a good book, paint a few pictures the critics will call sloppy but I’ll call pretty cool. Time to sit outside and soak in the sun. Look at the clouds floating in the sky, gliding slowly away. Time off from work to be in a play, not a “serious” play that would win awards, but a play that families will attend and say, “That sure was nice.”

And me and my wife and my kids will go to Church every Sunday, and the kids will recite scripture as we walk down the road, or hum a Church song, and the Church will be just down the road, and everything will be just like a Norman Rockwell painting, except better, because unlike a stagnant painting, my life will see the passage of time, my life will ripen as the fruit ripens, and I will never die.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa