Good Neighbors
With Thanksgiving arriving Thursday, I have been contemplating gratitude. Grateful for my family, for my friends from across my life and across the country, and especially grateful these days for the warm and supportive community of neighbors we have here in Santa Fe. Twenty years ago, when Jeff bought our first condo, preconstruction, in Zocalo, a new condominium community designed by the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, we thought of it as a vacation home. At that time, he had an apartment in New York, and I had my condominium in Santa Monica as well as a place in Cambridge that I shared with my dear friend Cathy. Too many places. When Jeff proposed to me, he teasingly framed it as a real estate consolidation.
By the time we moved into Zocalo we were down to three homes and before long just Santa Monica and Santa Fe. Like us most of our neighbors here were part time residents who we would smile and wave to but didn't really know. Over the years, we made friends with our close neighbors, but we were still coming and going frequently. With retirement just a few years away, we made a commitment to live here and moved to a larger home a few doors up the street.
Today we stop and talk to our neighbors as we walk the dog or chat with them around the pool. Now they are true friends, not just neighbors—people you can trust with your stories. There are monthly gatherings for cocktails, barbeques in back yards, dinners out together and when times prove difficult, drives to doctors or urgent care. There's a women's group, a book club, yoga classes, Crafternoons for knitting and a few mah jongg players in the clubhouse on Sundays.
I have written before about my early childhood neighborhood on Woolman Street in Butte, a kid's memory of a happy place. I shared my nostalgia for Ocean Park, where I loved having one of my best friends, Charlotte, as a next-door neighbor. In many ways the neighborliness that I feel here reminds of life on Brookshire Avenue in Ventura where I lived from sixth grade until I left for college. Everyone knew most every family up and down the block. Kids played together, I babysat for them, parents had cocktails together and watched out for us even if they didn't always manage to keep us out of trouble.
While there are younger couples in Zocalo there are few children although young Eva down the street does her best to befriend us and our dog Archie as she scooters down Avenida Rincon. Retired, we have time to get to know one another, to appreciate the creative energy and talents of our friends, to give back to our community. And to appreciate Legorreta's bold, brightly colored contemporary architecture as we walk about the neighborhood.
