Getting to know your neighbors

One quiet Sunday morning this past August, it hit me: our daughter was about to turn seven and still didn't know how to ride a bike. I took her out to teach her.

Out on the sidewalk, E. got on her pink, surfer-girl themed ride, pushed the pedals, and wobbled down the street.

She was oblivious to the fact that her seat and handlebars needed adjusting (she got the bike when she was four). This made her hunch over and her knees stick out, like a circus clown on a tiny tricycle. 

She didn't care. She quickly figured out how to balance and then raced down the sidewalk at full speed. She stopped and looked back at me, eyes gleaming with excitement.

I went to congratulate her, but as I approached, I saw that someone else was already doing so.

An elderly man, a neighbor, was sitting in his easy chair on his covered porch, clapping enthusiastically, sharing in my daughter's triumph.

I didn't know this neighbor. I mean, I knew of him, but I had always steered clear, a little afraid. He was very old, and had highly arched eyebrows that gave him a cold, judgmental look. He often sat in his chair and contemplated the neighborhood, aloof and silent.

But today he was smiling. He got out of his chair. He came down the stairs of his porch gingerly, gripping the handrail, walking on badly swollen ankles that were clearly painful.

“I remember,” he was saying to my daughter, “When I was about your age, my father taught me to ride. He took me to a grassy hill, so it wouldn't hurt if I fell. He let go of my seat and I just, pshhh---” 

He made a motion with his hand like he was taking off. His eyes were alive with the memory.

“That was a long time ago,” he said.

My daughter got back on her bike and started riding again, the world of adults and reminiscence must have paled in comparison to the feeling of the wind in her hair.

“It's something you never forget, isn't it?” I said. “The first time you ride a bike.” I was trying to make small talk.

He began to talk about his childhood, and I detected an accent.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked. It's a question we often ask each other here in Toronto, where everyone is from somewhere else.

“Germany,” he said, his face darkening. Now he knew I would register: very old guy, German...World War II! 

He launched into an explanation. “I was in the army. Not in Hitler Youth or the SS or anything. I was stationed in Russia.”

Right, nothing bad happened there, I thought cynically. Half my family is Jewish and came from Russia, Poland and Ukraine. My grandmother lost 26 relatives in the Holocaust.

Now the joy of the previous moment was gone, awkwardly replaced by the atrocities of the Eastern Front.

"When did you come to Canada?" I asked.

“1950. The first thing they asked me in immigration was, 'How many Jews did you kill?' Then they found me work in a Jewish deli. I could speak Yiddish. We all got along. The owner never asked me about my past. But you should have seen how my children were teased in school,” he continued. “They were called Nazis.”

It struck me that he had quite possibly spent a large part of his life explaining himself to people. As a German soldier in World War II, he was in his own way a victim of war. Then again, maybe he was a war criminal.

My daughter stopped her bike in front of his yard.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Ninety-four,” he said, as if the fact were unbelievable, even to him.

It was getting toward lunch, time to go home. We said our goodbyes.

“He's nice,” my daughter said, as we walked her bike home together. “He's really old. Is he going to die soon?”

“I hope not,” I said.

“He's almost a hundred!” said my daughter.

A few weeks later, an ambulance was parked at his house. He was being taken out on a stretcher and put into the back. For days after that, I didn't see him. His car wasn't in the driveway. The fall weather was warm and balmy; he should have been out on his porch. Every day when I walked by on my way to pick up the kids from their bus stop, I anxiously scanned his chair, but it was empty.

Finally, a few days ago, I saw him. I found I was relieved, overjoyed even.

“The old guy lives!” I texted my husband. My heart was pounding, happy he was still in the world. He was taking out the garbage, remembering the past, just like the rest of us.