Opening those Gates

Recently our family moved from Los Angeles to a suburban neighborhood that actually pays someone to paint the grass green.  We thought we would find, out of the city, all the neighborhood niceties we idealized from our cramped two-bedroom apartment.  Apartments force you to connect on some level to your neighbors – a passing on the stairwell, a shared wall.  I’m pretty sure the thinking goes that as you gain affluence, you also gain the privilege of privacy.  I couldn’t wait to get out.

Starting a few miles from our current home, we enter our section of town where we meet our first gate.  Heading up a two-mile hill we come to a series of subdivisions, all gate-coded and protected.  (I learned quickly that people refer to one another by their gates, as in “are you Villagio or Torrino?”)  Once we come to our gate, we enter our code and head down the street to our house, which has a gated courtyard.  Around the gated courtyard is a stucco retaining wall that blocks any view of what lies within and entirely surrounds the exterior of the property.  My son even took an extra length of iron gating and created a gated “fort” within the gated courtyard.  We drive our car into the garage and the large metal door closes behind us.  

With all this closing in of things around me, I couldn't wait to get out. I signed up for the local gym, and was stunned to find other women spending close to four hours a day working out.  Clearly this need to get out was rampant.  It was also completely creepy, so I quit and started running instead. 

My first day out I hit the “Pedestrian Gate” and realized I needed another code just to leave my own village.  Eventually I called the Homeowner’s Association for the code and I began to run regularly.  I started to see the same people out walking their dogs, and I’d wave to the familiar set of Army Veterans on their walk each morning.  However, because I had my iPod playing and children finishing school and errands to run, I didn’t really feel like I knew any of my neighbors.  I even started missing all the conversations I had with Trish, my Tennessee transplant neighbor in Los Angeles.  We’d meet on her porch in the 70-degree evenings and talk about all the craziness on our block.  Now that I lived in a suburban subdivision, whose door could I knock on to warn them it was street cleaning?   Who else could let me know about the local Rat Infestation? Where was all the contact?

When my husband came up with the idea of a neighborhood drive for the homeless, I was less than enthusiastic.  Not that the homeless aren’t important to me, I just thought it would be better to go down to the shelter and serve there, that way we wouldn’t have to bother anyone and we wouldn’t have to ask for anything.   I pulled out of my garage the following Saturday and there was a trailer parked at the end of our driveway.  “Don’t worry,” he said, “Homeowner’s Association granted approval.”  The idea was to drop a black plastic garbage bag by every home in our division with an attached flyer that read “Can You Fill This Bag?”  The following Saturday we would take a truck, gather the filled bags from the end of their driveways, and put them in the trailer.  Once we filled the trailer, workers from Deseret Industries would come pick it up and take the goods to the five shelters in the city whose donations had been so depleted.  It sounded easy enough, but the question remained: could our quiet little shut-in neighborhood gather the amount of things we needed in just one afternoon?

The first step was to take the bags around -- I couldn't believe how hard it was to find the front doors.  There were all varieties of gates: heavy wooden doors that blocked entry into the courtyard; locked metal gates with access-speakers; passageways that led to walkways that led to doors with no bell.  I hate to admit I was relieved when I didn’t have to talk to anyone.  Eventually people began to answer here and there, and we had actual -- neighborly -- conversations.  I commented on the artwork in one guy’s entryway and he led me inside and showed me a fantastic collection of really interesting local artifacts.  Another man was so thrilled with the chance to donate that he brought a carload of things over the next morning.  Neighborhood kids actually sat without seatbelts in the back of the truck as we gathered the supplies…now we were getting popular.  In less than one morning, with fewer than half the families in the village participating, we filled the trailer entirely.  I met new people.  We talked.  We felt great about what we accomplished.  And I even discovered through the grapevine a Universal Gate Code:  #9245 is opening all kinds of doors.