April 17--We continued to call the house next door "Susanna's house," long after it belonged to Susanna, and long after it was a house.
We learned last spring that our neighbor was losing her house to foreclosure. Her husband was ill, and he had moved in with other family members. The details were both foggy and none of our business, so we don't know exactly what happened.
But we watched with heavy hearts as she slowly, methodically dismantled her home.
She and her siblings spent weekends selling her belongings at garage sales. By the end of the summer she was giving away what hadn't sold -- Christmas plates, candle holders, picture frames. Things that no doubt held meaning -- or the potential for meaning, anyway -- when they were purchased.
We chatted with her casually about her plans to move in with a sister in the suburbs. We asked what we could do to help. We didn't do much, other than give her our Wi-Fi password when she no longer had Internet service.
I feel like we didn't do enough.
Shortly after she moved out, contractors arrived and started to tear down her home. Zoning plans arrived in our mailbox, spelling out what type of work would be done next door and what we could expect to endure, noise-wise, for the next few months.
The project would be a partial tear-down, we learned, with plans to transform Susanna's modest, charming old house into a 4-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath rectangle with a chef's kitchen and heated floors.
It was jarring, at first, to witness Susanna's house come down and a new one grow immediately in its place, like some kind of invasive species that flourishes in hostile terrain.
We came home from work and school one afternoon to find our east-facing kitchen flooded with light, a byproduct of Susanna's garage having been demolished in a day. It left a gaping hole in the alley between our garage and the next neighbor's over -- literally, paradoxically, brightening our day.
The bones of a new garage appeared within weeks, and we quickly grew accustomed to the sounds and sights of construction next door.
We started imagining who would move into Susanna's house. We envisioned a couple meeting with architects to draw up their dream home. We guessed at their names. Gabby and Eric, I proposed. Hermione and Dumbledore, my daughter suggested.
We hoped they would have young kids, and we hoped they would be friendly. We hoped they would buy lemonade from our annual stand. We hoped to become friends.
Then one day a Dream Town Realty sign appeared in the front yard. The not-yet-a-house that replaced Susanna's house was for sale.
This was not someone's lovingly crafted dream home. There was no couple. No Gabby or Eric, no kids on scooters.
A website was listed, and we quickly typed it into my phone, eager to see an artist's rendering of the final product.
"It looks like something out of Minecraft," my husband said.
It's all sharp angles and faux grass and there are, of course, no people.
Somehow this feels like a stunning betrayal. Susanna's house has given way to a spec home. The yard where her grandchildren once frolicked has become a developer's playground.
I'm trying to determine why this makes the whole ordeal seem profoundly sadder.
Susanna lost her home regardless of the events that unfold on her former land. Nice neighbors named Gabby and Eric wouldn't change the fact that her mementos were systematically passed along to strangers.
I guess it just feels like a misinterpretation of a neighborhood. Neighborhoods are for people, not profits.
They're for block parties and gossiping on front stoops and swapping restaurant tips over back fences and open invitations to grab basil and cucumbers from the garden because, man, both came in really strong this year.
I could warm up to a family who decided to take a chance and put down roots on a new block -- our block -- even as I felt sad about Susanna's misplacement. I'm having a harder time feeling warmly toward a developer who caught wind of the vacancy and smelled a profit.
I know it happens every day. In every neighborhood, in every city. I understand how foreclosures happen. I realize the developer did not evict Susanna from her home.
But it sure doesn't feel like progress. When you're living next door, it feels like the opposite.
hstevens@tribpub.com
