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Sue Turi (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

Fifteen years ago our riverside neighborhood was a heap of dirt excavated from culled forest. 

Trucks chugged through the dug-up mounds of tree roots and river rock on their development mission. Bulldozers clawed at the earth; houses went up faster than you could say brick and mortar. The rat-a-tat of nail guns punctuated the spring air. It felt optimistic. Virgin land, freshly built homes, sparkly new neighbors, just like my young family and I. 

Groups of neighborhood kids would go on bike excursions over the undeveloped landscape. When it rained, they would return looking like the Huns, their bike chains swaying with exhaustion. Sure, the new houses were layered in perpetual dust, and mud was tracked everywhere. There was not a blade of grass or flower in sight, and house interiors reeked of paint. But there was community among us. 

The surrounding native residents in their modest clapboard bungalows were understandably upset that the rich (or heavily in debt) had come to town and destroyed their backyard forest. Maria brought me red geraniums that first spring from her garden and I planted them everywhere. Maria was a retired immigrant from Romania living in one of those bungalows. She had spied me from her backyard through a gap in between two new houses that dwarfed her home. She found it in her heart to make the most of a bad thing. Her geraniums, like my optimism, could never die, or so it seemed. 

We new kids on the block felt connected by our common newness. We were equals. I got to know my immediate neighbors in the Canadian way—with guarded civility. Our kids played together in the street and we would lend each other ladders and air compressors. Conversations were about city regulations, property taxes, renovations, money and schools. Uncomfortable or confrontational topics of discussion were avoided. 

After the city streets had been laid and sewers and lamplights installed, fencing was erected, sealing off everyone’s little private space. A few years passed with homeowners selling and moving out, and new ones moving in. Those who remained cemented their existing relationships further with the knowledge that they were the original settlers. 

Then it all changed. 

It was the spring of 2018. A bulldozer two houses down from mine arrived one day and began excavation. In a week an almost Olympic-sized (relative to the yard) inground pool had been installed in a neighbour’s backyard. An iron double-decker terrace extended from their house towards the pool and spilled over with sofas and cushions. We sat for a while, considering our neighbor’s decision, which took up his whole backyard. I never considered ourselves pool-deprived or poor, though I couldn’t help but have a sinking feeling about it. I thought we had a pact of equals.

The next month, our neighbor right next door dug up his grass and swings and installed his own pool. Was there a secret pool pact between the two neighbours? A newly arrived family on the other side of us seemed to catch the bug and squeezed their pool paradise with artificial firepits, swing chairs and canopies, into a square the size of a small corner store. The same month a neighbour whose backyard faced ours installed an above-ground circular pool. It was all too much, all of a sudden, all around me. I felt like a plant wedged between the crack in the sidewalk doing its best to defy hot cement. I spent the following months trying to figure out whether it was the noise, the traffic of equipment or the fear that my son would feel like a have-not, that was the cause of my despair. I was already missing the sound of the wind blowing through wind chimes, birds and evening crickets in-between moments of silence. The splashing, diving yelling, and Justin Bieber till midnight brought unpleasant feelings of needing to call the cops or to place conciliatory notes under car wipers. 

The dynamic with our neighbors had changed. We may each have had our own sectioned-off space, but we shared the same neighborhood air in the end. We began to slowly retreat into our respective isolated shells of haves and have-nots. Days of chatting about our patchy grass or the best wood stain to paint the deck vanished. Eventually, the “Hi, how are ya?”s over the fence stopped. 

Perhaps the signs of alienation were already there and I had missed them. It was just a matter of time before we grew apart. 

The neighborhood would never be the same again, but had it ever truly been equal? Was not equality forced upon us by arriving on the same footing at a new housing development? I was feeling like Maria in her bungalow—invaded—though it would take a little more than geraniums to feel at peace. 

But how much of my disappointment was due to sour grapes, I asked myself? Was I secretly harboring pool envy? Denying a desire to have what others had? My son’s hopes of being invited for a swim were eventually squelched as the reality of what it means to be neighbours, rather than friends, began to sink in. It could be worse, I thought. Like having an open dispute over cars blocking driveways or street bullying. 

It’s been six years now since the pools descended upon me, and with time, the novelty of having a backyard holiday resort has worn off a little for our neighbours. Our kids are older, some have left home, and others are holed up playing video games all day in air conditioning. But I still don’t have a resolution to the swimming pool invasion other than to hope that one day the city cleans up enough of the longest commercial waterway in the world for everyone, no matter their economic status or aesthetic tastes, to enjoy a safe summer dip in the river.

~FIN~

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Sue Turi is a writer, illustrator and painter living in Montréal, Canada with a degree in fine arts. She began her career as a production artist for design studios and ad agencies, before deciding to devote herself purely to self-expression through writing and painting.