Front Doors

It's funny how things change in unexpected ways when you almost never go out the front door. Our hundred year old house in Berkeley had no garage. We parked on the street. As did all of our neighbors. We met each other, chatted with each other, got caught up with each other on the street. We had a front door and a back door. The back door opened on to our tiny garden. Our front door took us out of the house to the sidewalk, if we were walking to the bank or the post office or Peet's, or our car if we were going farther afield.

Here, the neighbors we have met are very nice but we have to arrange to see them because walking down our driveway, down the street, and up another driveway, while it sounds easy enough, is not to be undertaken lightly in curvy, hilly road with no streetlights. Because of the rural nature of where we are, we drive almost everywhere, in which case we go down an internal staircase into our garage, climb into our cars and drive away.

Our closest neighbors do not live in their house yet. He is a pilot and they are living in Key West. They bought their house before we moved here, but have yet to take up permanent residence, since his seniority changed when his airline merged with another one, and he had to wait an extra 3 years to retire. They are here now, working in their garden right next to our driveway. Their is nothing but an old house between our properties and no ravine, as there is on the other side. They will move in 2014 when he retires, and I think they will remind us a bit of our "old" life.

I worked hard to get a new porch and driveway on Magnolia Street (the old one was brick, built on top of the old wooden one, and I finally got my chance when the wooden supports began rotting and the whole thing threatened to fall down). I always enjoyed walking up to the front door. Here, we have a pleasant entryway which we never use. Life revolves around the back stairs past the brooms and the pantry and into the kitchen.