An Ode to Country Hills Road
Beloved neighbors:
After 24 years, the McKeagney family has only a few days remaining on Country Hills Road. Our moving day is Saturday, April 29.
When Gabriel and I first arrived in 1999, we were a young couple in our early 30s with no children. Terese H., who used to live four doors down, came knocking on our door with a plate of cookies in her hand to welcome us to the neighborhood. She remarked on how big the place was for just the two of us. I told her we intended to fill the house. And we did.
In 24 years, we filled the house with noise and laughter, with footsteps and music, with boy scouts and birthday parties, with hungry bachelors and teenage study groups, with jars of homemade apple butter and bottles of homemade apple cider, with sawdust and stardust. We filled the house with life upon life, and in return, the house filled us. She never failed us. Not once.
Our three children came home from the hospital to Country Hills Road. When they were little, our children were babysat by the older kids on the street. And when they got older, they babysat the younger kids on the street. This watching over is our ethos on Country Hills Road. We’ve watched over each other.
This letter is to thank you for watching over me and my children, my little swallows.
Last year, Brian got his first tattoo. He didn’t tell me about it, of course. We were just chatting and laughing over dinner, and mid-sentence I saw it and oh! I caught my breath in my heart. The tattoo is beautifully rendered. He said he paid good money to have it done well, and it’s truly mesmerizing. Etched on his upper left arm, just behind his line of sight, is a swallow in full flight with layered feathers of outstretched wings. It’s a swallow because he is from San Juan Capistrano. That gave me some solace; he is proud of his sweet hometown. He will travel the far reaches of the globe, but he will always be from Country Hills Road. The swallows always come back to San Juan Capistrano. They always come home.
And if you’ll allow this old high school English teacher to get literary for just a moment …
In chapter 30 of To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus finally agrees that the lie Heck Tate proposes holds more integrity than the truth, he turns to Boo Radley in gratitude and says, “Thank you for my children, Arthur.” But here’s the rub: he doesn’t say, “Thank you for saving my children, Arthur,” which is what I would have said, given that Boo literally just saved the children’s lives. No, he thanks Arthur for the entirety of his children, not just the life-saving moment. In other words, Atticus credits Boo with all of the imagination and mystery and wonder and little epiphanies that Jem and Scout encounter within the pages of my favorite novel. Boo had been watching over them the entire time.
Thank you, my neighbors of Country Hills Road, for watching over us. Thank you for my children. Thank you, too, to those families who have left already but who were fundamental in forming their sunrise-colored childhood. Thank you for hand-me-down clothes, homemade Halloween costumes, contraband Fourth of July fireworks, Christmas cookies exchanges, summer-long bike escapades, and epic water balloon fights. Thank you for your endearing friendship, and thank you for watching over us. Thank you for my children.
A sweet young couple will be moving in next week. They have no kids yet, and the house may seem too big for just two people, but they intend to fill it. They will. You’ll watch over them, won’t you?
