The Footsteps Above Me

I hear her footsteps—light at first. She paces up and down the hallway, closes cabinets in the kitchen with a casual bang, cleans her litter box with a definitive “tap, tap, tap” on the side of her trashcan. She listens to the radio while she works out on her treadmill. She always exercises in the morning, possibly before work.

She paces. She never seems at rest. Always walking up and down, back and forth. I hear each of her footsteps and wonder what keeps her in such constant motion.

I promise myself that one day I will go upstairs, knock on her front door, and introduce myself as her downstairs neighbor. We only have four units in my apartment. She is my most intimate neighbor.

Downstairs apartments have the luxury of not knowing how noisy they are. I can walk as heavily as I want. I can ride my exercise bike as late as I want, and there is no one beneath me counting the minutes until I stop.

I try to be a conscientious neighbor. I do not listen to my television very loudly.

I do not know what she thinks about having me as a neighbor. I’m sure she’s been adequately entertained by some of the things she’s seen or heard. Maybe she’s been irritated or annoyed. Some of it has to be expected of having a young and active neighbor.

She rarely has visitors. I’ve only glimpsed her once as she was climbing up her front steps to her apartment. I know that she is probably in her 50s or older. She and I watched the Democrat debates in January together—a slight delay in our television sets.

I know her habits. I know she paces.

What stops me from walking up those steps with a plate of cookies? It would help if I baked. But, what if I took something else? Or, I could just take myself. We are neighbors after all.

I grew up on a neighborhood so rare these days. All of the families had lived there for over twenty years. Several families had children, and we were all about the same age—closer than most cousins, knowing each other as intimately as siblings. I was one of the youngest.

On a good day, we could rustle up as many as 20 children—wild, sweaty on humid summer nights, competitive. There were sprawling games of Capture the Flag. There were endless games of Swedish, my parents’ front porch serving as the place where everyone who was “out” sat and chanted the name of the person they needed “out” to get back in. Flashlight Tag, Ghost in the Graveyard, Spud, the games on those summer nights were infinite.

When one of our neighbors passed away (her name was Nancy—she was 10 years older than I. She had a heart condition and was never supposed to graduate high school. I wanted to be just like her), all of us gathered around our next door neighbors' brick patio and shared stories about Nancy. We grieved together. I was 8 years old. Most of the other kids were 14, 11, 9. I don’t remember how many of us were there that day. But, it was our impromptu moment of grief. We felt strikingly adult, maturity starting to take early root.

I knew all of their parents like aunts and uncles. We had block parties. We had private dinners together. We walked in and out of each other’s houses as if the entire neighbor was one big connected home.

Being a neighbor meant something. I don’t know if neighborhoods exist like that anymore. And, the irony is—I can make it sound as romantic as I want and it still will not adequately capture what it was like.

And, there was nothing as heart-stopping as having an ambulance screech down that little avenue, as it has done at three significant times in my history with the street. Each time tragic and sad—all of us gathering around each other’s families, stepping out front doors, coming to put an arm around the people left behind.

Who are our neighbors now? Who are my friends? Are the people I befriend online “neighbors”? We peek out our curtains at each other. We read those status updates on Facebook the way I used to catch glimpses inside my next door neighbors’ opened windows. When someone has a bad day, we make a post like a friendly wave. We poke each other as if to say, “I was thinking of you.” This is not unlike that neighborhood on Byall Ave in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Maybe this is why I listen so intently to those footsteps above me. Maybe this is why I take comfort in each pacing footstep of my upstairs neighbor. And, yet, she is farther away from me than many people who are miles away.

I do not know who lives in the other two apartments. We live separately together.

One day I hope to find the courage to greet my neighbor and introduce myself. Maybe then we can share a stroll outside in the sunlight, down the sidewalk we both recognize, and finally acknowledge each other as neighbors.