Bits And Pieces

Lonely Newcomers

     It seems we just get acquainted with our neighbors and poof! suddenly they're transferred.  We get a nice, comfortable eight all settled for a monthly bridge club and boom! one of the members move.

    Well, our town is filled with the business man, the young executive on the way up, and he's a movable commodity.

     Now its a difficult proposition to move whether it's 50 miles or 500.  Not just the crating and physical moving--but the leaving of old friends, of placing the children in new and strange schools.  Of the clipping and leaving a bit of your roots in each place you live.

     There's the loneliness--a phone that is strangely silent--too many weekends of just watching TV--another period of having to try too hard to be friendly.

     A time when your husband is especially busy with a new or changed position.  When the children are unhappy missing their old friends.

     "It takes about a year to really find friends.  To finally overcome the emptiness of being in a new place.  It takes a year to make a home out of a new house," said a friend who has moved about the country.

     "It's not quite so bad when the children are small," declared a new member of my bridge club.  "But when the kids are in high school and have to leave their friends and change the familiar routine of their school, it's tough."

     And it is particularly tough on you, Mom.  You're the buffer--the goat.  The one the children find to argue with because they're lonesome--a new school, new teachers and new possible friends all make for frustrations.  

     Your husband is working longer hours getting acquainted with his new job and you, Mom, get mighty tired of that new house.

     The first few weeks you are busy with curtains, opening boxes and taking out and putting away.  Fixing up cupboards and waiting for men to hook up appliances.  You have the youngsters to start in school, and finally you spend time getting acquainted with the new stores.

     But suddenly one morning you miss the phone ringing--the meetings of your bridge club and the shopping jaunts with friends you've left behind.  It's slowly, very slowly, you make new friends to take the places of the old.

     If you're young with small children, you'll meet other young neighbors when you are out walking the baby or your grade school children will soon have you getting acquainted with the mothers of their new friends.

     Pop and I moved around crisscrossing the country.  We were young and fortunate in that our moves were mostly into small plant towns.  

     Those places hardly warranted a dot on the map but were populated by friendly people.  Most of them had also moved thither and yon so were extra sociable to newcomers.  Also the towns were a considerable distance from large cities so the people depended upon each other for entertainment.

     Dances were Saturday night affairs, and bridge groups met often.  Dinner parties were weekly customs, and there was always teenage babysitters available.

     Chicago was the first area we were transferred into where making new friends was strictly our own affair.  But once again we were fortunate.  Arlington Heights' population read barely 4000, and it was friendly.  There were block coffees for a newcomer--clubs for the newcomer and neighbors eager to know you.

     Suburbs then were friendly little villages where everyone left their doors unlocked, knew all the shopkeepers and were acquainted with all their neighbors.

     But with the hopscotch of families moving in and out, it's difficult to keep up with the house two doors away.

     Maybe, though, we could all remember just how it was when we moved in, and at least give that new neighbor up the street a phone call.  Bet she'd enjoy having her phone give an unaccustomed ring.  And a cheery voice just saying "Hello. I'm your neighbor," might take away a little of the loneliness we all have when we're strangers in a new town.

Written March 10, 1966

     This was the last article Mom wrote for the Herald, the original paper she wrote her "I'm new here" twenty years previously (in the Preface).  She had come full circle and parted with some advice. 

     This had no by line probably because she had already started writing for the daily newspaper competition that had just started up, but her style is unmistakable.  A few months prior she had become a contributor to a "Sidelines" section of the Herald along with articles and Library Corner pieces.  I believe she felt that Sidelines was a step backwards for her in that it was very similar to Anklin' but was much longer and a collaboration of two other writers.  Mom had gotten used to contributing to the paper what she wanted and when she wanted.  So she went to the new paper.