When we first moved here, the neighborhood was full of families and older people. The families have grown up, moved away and many of their houses have been torn down and apartment blocks built in their place. And the older people, well, they've also moved on.
So now, we're the only house in our street. There doesn't seem to be many families with children living here now. Most of the apartments appear to be occupied by young singles or couples without kids. The cyclical nature of neighborhoods is definitely apparent here.
The life of a mother to young kids means that I'm home on all Saturday nights. I'm not really a busy body but I do like observing my neighbors and their habits. Its inevitable since the back of our house looks into the living rooms of eight other homes.
This weekend was the ANZAC Day long weekend. And, one of our neighbors had a party on Saturday night. In fact, since we moved back in September, this particular neighbor has had a party on every single public holiday eve so far - Christmas, New Year, Easter and now ANZAC day. The only one that he skipped was Good Friday. This isn't a post complaining about other people's parties.
Its about cycles. The neighborhood is obviously going through the cycle of having younger people, younger families, families and then older people...something like that.
Richard asked me a simple question that made me think of another cycle:
"When was the last time you went to a party?"
I've been to a few parties recently. There was a friend's daughter's first birthday, Aaron's third birthday, another first birthday and my own birthday. Not exactly the types of parties Richard was referring to. And to answer his real question, I would have to say 2005.
I think I'm feeling a tiny bit bummed that I've come full circle with parties. The first one I ever went to was my own first birthday and now, I'm back to attending kiddy parties again. Somewhere in the middle, we had those great parties that my neighbor seems to be enjoying right now. Parties that only start at 10pm and went all the way to tomorrow. The kind with lots of people, lots of music, lots of drinks, LOTS OF CAREFREE FUN looking out for nobody else except myself.
I do see some light at the end of the tunnel because my parents seem to be going to a lot of fun parties, no longer with their kids in tow. And not the day time type of party either. For now, we'll have other kinds of fun with Aaron and Adrian as they start their Party Life Cycles.
2 comments:
I had to look up " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Day ". It's like the US Memorial Day.
Now that I've done all this research work this morning I think it's time to start partying.
Your comment about neighborhood cycles is interesting, because we've watched our neighborhood go through more-little-children, more-teenagers, more-adults-with-no-children cycles in the 18 years we've lived here. When we first moved in, there were bazillions of little children. Then it was all adults. A year later there were teenagers looking to baby-sit for all the little children that weren't there. And now we're back to lots of little children. I like the little children better, because they don't fill up limited parking places with their cars, play loud music, and leave beer cans in the yard.
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