Encomium

Continuing with the theme of death, the other day my mother sent me a clipping of an obituary of our old next door neighbor. Until the time I was seven, my family lived in Indianapolis on the east side in the same neighborhood where my mother and father had gone to high school and where my grandmother had grown up. For a long time, that place was home, and the place we moved to was the “new house.” The new house had a rural route number, although it was on a street of newer houses surrounded by cornfields. The first house was in a neighborhood of small bungalows and cape cods nestled close together that now must be nearing the century mark.

Our house was a little limestone number with green trim. It had a low roof like a bungalow but no front porch. Instead, the front yard was graced by a crabapple tree in one corner and a redbud in the other, and by the front door was a little imitation courtyard garden, with a wrought fence enclosing bleeding hearts, lily of the valley, and daffodils, all clustered under a small dogwood tree. In my memory it was glorious – straight from the pages of a Tasha Tudor book. But when as an adult, I drove by with my husband, all those colors in the front yard had vanished.

The inside wasn’t quite as quaint: gold shag carpet, lattice wallpaper with big yellow flowers, wallsized mirror in the living room. Green shag carpet covered the back bedroom that Betty and I shared with a big green piano. That room, I think, had been a porch and had indoor/outdoor carpet when we first lived there. My first brush with home decorating was when my parents put in real carpet. I remember wanting to sleep on that plush surface with all my stuffed animals.


So that little house was cozy, but not beautiful on the inside. On the other hand, the neighbors' house, a white cape cod, was all loveliness. The couple who lived there had grown children who visited sometimes but not for long. These neighbors were kind and warm, unlike the neighbor on the other side of us, who seemed the incarnation of Mr. McGregor. I would climb on the wooden fence in the backyard and call to the nice neighbors for an invitation. And sometimes – often? -- they would invite me to come over. The Mr. mostly did yard work like the neighbor on the opposite, but he let us jump in his leaf piles. The Mrs., whom I called by her first name, would invite me in for little cucumber/Wonderbread sandwiches with the crusts cut off. We would practice good manners. She tried to teach me to knit. She taught me "Pretty is as pretty does" when I went fishing for compliments (or maybe to lower my expectations to a more fitting level for a homely child). 

The highlight of my visits were following her upstairs to the room with eaves and dormers where her daughter’s dolls were kept. This room was pink and green, my favorite color combination, and the bedspread was frilly and girlish. Was there a white wicker vanity or am I making that up? I don’t remember actually playing there, only gazing in awe at the dolls and books, as if visiting a museum to 1960’s girlhood. I wonder if that room was ever redecorated after we moved away.


According to the obituary, a long, informative one, the Mr. and Mrs. were married over 50 years when the Mr. died in 1995. By the time I knew them, they were retired, but previously they both worked relatively unglamorous jobs – she was a secretary at a steel company. But having a glamorous job apparently wasn’t what motivated her. She apparently enjoyed community life, as the obituary lists her membership in several clubs, activities at her church, and her work as a docent at the Benjamin Harrison Home, where she wore period dresses to give tours to schoolchildren. The couple travelled to Europe and went out dancing until they were in their eighties. Someone cared enough to include in the obit small details such as that the Mrs. was a book lover and an avid newspaper reader. I love this bit: “Until she became ill, she was still enjoying going out to lunch each week, always wearing red lipstick and high heels.” In addition to a list of survivors, the obit lists a number of friends and caregivers to whom thanks were owed. Contributions were directed to the Methodist Church down the street from the house in the old neighborhood.


What a full, happy life. What a gift was her kindness to little girls. I’m sorry that as an adult I never told her how thankful I am for those memories, although thanks were probably unnecessary. She likely enjoyed our little tea parties as much as we did.