Nov 1, 2024

Salty Tires

Sylvia Shawcross

The person next door to me built a monster-like home. It towers over me like a deep purple, well… monster. Right next to me—not a grass expanse of yard away, but right next to me.

The decks they built are high above my hovel looking down on me and even if I were to put up a wall, it would be have to be two stories tall to avoid their unannounced gaze. It is just not feasible. The peaceful private life I struggled so hard to keep and preserve has been violated. No one knows the sacrifices in all these years I’ve made to be “home.” To be here.

I don’t talk about it. I could, but I don’t. What would be the point?

I cannot fault the man. It was his property to do with as he saw fit. I do not hate him and his family. I don’t know them. Sadly I don’t want to know them. I’m sure they are lovely people. We all keep to ourselves. It is the way it is now anyway.

They broke my heart and don’t even know it. How do you talk to someone who breaks your heart as if it was just a passing conversation? When you stand there bleeding and they stand there proud and possessive and possibly quite eager to show off their dream home? How could you explain that your hovel so hardly fought for was your dream home too?

What a killjoy that would be. How unkind of me not to celebrate their happiness. I work at accepting. I try not to be bitter. There is no way, mourning as I am to make lemonade of the situation now.

Oh I knew that someone one day might build there. It was an empty lot. Small though and steep and full of fill. In the spring and summer I would go there and gather wild flowers for the vase or the seeds of the sumac for lemonade strangely enough. In those days when I was happy. When I actually made lemonade. Even out of bad situations.

I could have accepted a bungalow. That’s what was rumoured to be the plan. I should have known better—here, in this 15-minute well-heeled city in the making. I think they call it in-fill. Then it became a two storey house and then really, a three storey if you count the back part that opens out onto the yard. Then it was going to have a granny suite for the parent.

Now it has an Air B&B. And lots of cars, trucks and equipment. It is not a world I understand. But then I know, everybody is doing the best they can and this is their way.

I am sure that there are those who do not like me and are delighted at the intrusion of my peace with this monster home. They pass by and snicker perhaps. It doesn’t matter. In this life you have not been someone if you have no enemies. I used to be a reporter. Reporters do not have an easy life. You will be at times well hated.

Well, in those days. Nowadays a real reporter is a hard thing to find. Nowadays it seems that reporters feed on fluff and gossip and sunshine to be liked—not necessarily respected. To be bought and paid for mostly.

Here by the monster home, in my hovel, I miss the branches of the trees by the bedroom window where the horned owl would sit, hooting in the wee hours like a comfort, like a hug. All these years. I miss the light I had there because now I keep the curtain closed at all times because it is not a good view looking at the side of a house. I miss the wild turkeys that would routinely cluster there with their silly ugliness.

I just miss the wild turkeys. Turkeys are not beautiful. They truly are not beautiful birds. They are not finches or peacocks. Then again, they aren’t exactly vultures but they could be. They liked the salt on the tires of my car for some reason and I would catch them pecking at them.

They don’t much come around anymore since the building went up. I hope they survived the hunting season before Thanksgiving. All of them. Perhaps they all made their way to a safe wild wood. Poor things.

In a way I wish we all could retreat to the safe wild wood. In this world they are making. They still pave paradise but they call it different things.

Here’s a freakin’ earworm for those of us who feel sorry for ourselves. Like me. Today.