My Neighbor

Miss Spencer was our next-door neighbor when I was growing up. She was a spinster, whatever that was. She taught English at the High School and all the parents in our neighborhood liked her. She not only volunteered for many neighborhood committees and organized neighborhood block parties and the welcome wagon, she looked out for the neighborhood kids in the summer. She was about Mom’s age. As a kid, I recognized that they weren’t movie stars, but I thought both of them were pretty, especially when they dressed up. Mom was a brunette, Miss Spencer a blonde. Miss Spencer was taller than Mom. Besides looks, which were important, Mom and Miss Spencer had different personalities. At least to a little kid, Miss Spencer always seemed happy whereas Mom seemed worried most of the time, sort of frazzled. Miss Spencer seemed calm, like she could handle whatever came.

Her business taking care of kids in the summer thrived. Kids could stay right in the neighborhood if Miss Spencer took them, for the summer, so pick-up and drop-off was close to home. Most kids she took could walk to Miss Spencer’s house in a pinch. She was very dependable and didn’t complain if parents were a little late picking the kids up. Parents could even, if they planned it, leave their kids with Miss Spencer for a couple of days and get away. So, in the summer there were generally three or four kids at her house during the day, and, since most kids were only children, maybe an extra kid that night, or very rarely two. Mom loved her. She made Mom’s life much easier.

Since we only saw Dad every once in a while, having Miss Spencer next door was very convenient for her. Once, Mom even left me with her when she took a vacation to New York City by herself. I really didn’t mind. That’s all Mom could talk about for a couple of months after she got back and I loved staying with Miss Spencer.

The first year that Miss Spencer took care of me during the summer, Mom emphasized one thing to me before she took me over to her house. Unlike Mom, Miss Spencer believed in spanking unruly children. Mom never spanked me at all, but Miss Spencer had Mom sign a release to allow spanking. Mom thought about this, and we talked about it. She emphasized Miss Spencer expected to be obeyed. Mom further told me she expected me to obey Miss Spencer. All this emphasis made me a little scared when I was taken over to her house the first day of the first year I stayed with her in the summer. She was, after all, a High School teacher, and I was in elementary school. I knew how mean the High School kids were and so I was pretty much in awe of anyone who could control them. Despite the dire warnings, it didn’t turn out that way. Miss Spencer, who I had known slightly all my life, was confident I would enjoy the summer and we would become great friends. Two other kids from the neighborhood stayed with her that summer, Katy, who was two years older than I, and Heather, who was my age. I wasn’t really enthusiastic about playing with girls all summer, but Miss Spencer pointed out that there were plenty of boys who had a couple of sisters and no brothers, so she thought I would survive.

In any case, Miss Spencer had something for us to do every day. I made a wallet for Dad, as an example, and a candle for Mom and potholders and salt and pepper shakers that Mom used every day after. I think she still has them, at least she did years later when I finished college. Crafts like that only took up a portion of our day. Miss Spencer was different from Mom in another way. At home, Mom took care of all the cleaning and meal preparation. At Miss Spencer’s we took care of ourselves. We made our own lunches under supervision, cleaned up after ourselves, and did all sorts of little chores around the house. With all that, we still had plenty of time to ourselves to play or read or just watch TV or play with our phones or video games. Sometimes we’d go to museums, or the library, or take tours of factories and the local newspaper and all sorts of other fun things that’d I’d seen on TV but didn’t have much experience with. Miss Spencer didn’t spank us at all, ever. During that first year, she never even threatened to. I asked her about it and she just smiled and said as long as I behaved, I had nothing to worry about. Given Mom’s admonitions, Miss Spencer’s comment had quite an effect on me. I behaved. I was a good boy generally, understand, but I was careful to be on my best behavior at Miss Spencer’s. The girls were too, we all behaved.

In addition to the inside of the house, Miss Spencer had a garden in her backyard where she grew vegetables of all sorts. Having grown up in the suburbs of a big city, none of us had much to do with gardens but all of us learned a lot about them from Miss Spencer as we learned about a lot of things.

Katy was our leader that first year, she was oldest and had stayed with Miss Spencer the year before, so was experienced, but she was very nice. I liked her a lot. Heather, on the other hand, liked me more than I liked her. You could tell, it wasn’t anything I could point to, but her interest in me was evident. She coupled this with a tendency to be bossy which I didn’t like at all. She was always explaining to me the right way to do things and how I ought to act towards women and how she was equal, whatever that meant, and how much I generally didn’t know and she did. She was a minor pain in an otherwise fun summer vacation from school.

When school started up, I missed Miss Spencer and Katy and even Heather. I didn’t talk to Katy at school, except to say “Hi”, she was always with the big kids. I saw Heather more, but she wasn’t in my class, and when I did see her, I was actually glad. That school year I went over to Miss Spencer’s a lot on Saturdays. She gave me little chores to help her around the house. Mom used to ask her what her secret was, she couldn’t do anything to get me to help. But I did all sorts of things to help Miss Spencer, like pulling weeds and taking out the garbage and other little tasks that came up. Miss Spencer would laugh and say that’s how kids are. When she got me alone she did tell me that it was a little disappointing to hear that I wasn’t helping Mom out much, after all Mom had me and a job. After that little talk, I did more around our house, the little chores that I did routinely at Miss Spencer’s, like pick up after myself. I started taking out the garbage when it needed it rather than waiting for Mom to tell me to do it and hoping that she’d just do it instead of telling me. I even took the carrier to the curb on pick-up days and brought it back to the garage in the evening. I did Miss Spencer’s too. I even started helping to clean up after supper, Miss Spencer had pointed out that I knew how to do that since she had taught me. In this way, Miss Spencer helped ease Mom’s life as well as make me a better kid, more aware of the feelings of others.

I grew up like this, with Dad on the periphery of my life, but with things revolving around Mom and Miss Spencer. The cast of kids at Miss Spencer’s changed. I was the only constant. After the first couple of years the kids were always younger, so I was always the leader with an assortment of boys and girls for my followers. I was a good kid, a little nerdy I guess, and not very popular in school, but my life was very pleasant. I liked it when Miss Spencer referred to me as her assistant. That made me feel important and so I took my responsibility seriously. I taught the other kids how to wash and put away the dishes because Miss Spencer didn’t like the dishwasher, for example and all the other chores and craft she came up with to keep us busy. I did see her spank a couple of kids in those years. One never came back to the house, so we started out with four and ended up with three for the summer. One, who, at the first, just didn’t want to do anything, straightened up and started doing his share.

When I got in High School, I quit going over to Miss Spencer’s except to help her now and again. She always had cookies and lemonade and other treats. She didn’t buy much in the store, but seemed to make everything from ingredients. It was really good.

I got through High School OK, but I was never a particularly good student. I went to the state college because they had to take all the high school graduates of accredited state high schools and because it gave me a huge tuition discount. School was difficult and lonely and I had to work, but I got through in six years owing no money.

Mom got remarried during my first year at college to some guy who lived in California. Dad lived in Louisiana. Which left me with no home in the state. I was worried I would lose my home state discount so I wrote to Miss Spencer and explained it all and asked if I could use her address as my home instead of one of my parents. She said she was happy to do that. It was just natural that I started going over to her house for holidays and when I drove back to my hometown on a weekend off. I kept in touch with Mom on the computer, but I wrote Miss Spencer a couple of times a month and she always wrote back. Being an English teacher, she thought writing letters was important. I don’t know about that but I can tell you both of them got me over a lot of humps.

While I was in college, Mom, at her age, had another kid, which really surprised me when she announced it was coming. That kid was added to a couple of step kids of her husband, so they had a five person family, which was pretty big. Mom did get to stay home and so she was very happy every time I talked with her, which was quite a change from when I was growing up. As it was I remained a worry in her life, but became pretty much her only worry. She worried that I was lonely, that I’d do something silly, or one of a thousand things she saw on the news that weren’t going to happen because I was too busy and didn’t have the resources to screw up some kids had. I was a little lonely, I didn’t have many friends at school, and between work and classes almost all my time was accounted for.

Miss Spencer kept on with her life. Mom was in her early 40’s so I guess Miss Spencer was too, but she didn’t talk about herself much in her letters, which were always anticipated and enjoyed. We wrote a lot about what I wanted to do in life and we talked a lot about our summers spent together. I told her how scared I was first meeting her, scared she was going to spank me and be generally mean. She expressed some surprise, she said I always seemed to enjoy coming over, which I agreed I did. She kept all my letters, I wrote her from college, which was quite a number. She showed me later.

During the time I was downstate, Miss Spencer got promoted to assistant principal and then, a year later, retired from school, and quit taking in kids. She told me that there were just too many regulations to follow and, while she enjoyed teaching and kids, it wasn’t worth the aggravation. I put two and two together and decided changing rules on how children were disciplined which was drifting away from corporal punishment, had caused her ‘retirement’. In fact they even passed a law against it and had crusades against “child abuse”. Miss Spencer wrote she didn’t really need the money, but she did miss the company. I guess we were both a little lonely my last year in college.

Anyway, time passed, and after I finally got my degree in Journalism I resolved to relocate back to my hometown rather than California because I was worried about my limited resources. Miss Spencer invited me to stay at her house while I got settled and I accepted her generous offer. I did drive out and see Mom in California. She had a whole new life there and, while she was very glad to see me it was obvious I was just a visitor in her California home. Her husband seemed nice. Their kids were a little too rambunctious for my taste and loud.

All in all, I was ready to head home when I headed back to Miss Spencer’s. Pulling up in her driveway, in my old neighborhood, brought back a lot of pleasant memories.