Every Midwest neighborhood has at least one.
Joy and I call him Mr. Neighbor. The guy who cuts his grass to the PGA regulation standard. He has a big smile and a suburban handshake (a wave) for the rest of the neighborhood – we who run mole motels and cannot, EVER, beat Mr. Neighbor to the punch for any yard job. He has always completed the raking, trimming, blowing, sweeping, snipping, buffing before the rest of us have had our Saturday morning coffee. With a smile he will gladly offer any tool or equipment to surrounding households, so that they too may be as he is.
Why does Mr. Neighbor intimidate me so? Why does the perfection of his estate make me feel like a failure? Has anyone ever complained about the state of my yard? How has his discipline and skill offended me? Does his greatness make me a weakling?
So everyone has a Mr. Neighbor. But not everyone has a Ray. Most yard perfectionists are aware of boundaries. But our Mr. Neighbor mows the proverbial lawn of Parenthood, and if the mole motel of my family infests his yard, he will offer to manicure my lawn to be just like his own.
His back yard, which is kitty-corner up to ours, is a shrine to boyhood. There are toys for little guys and big guys, from the $3,000 playset with swings, slides, flags and ladders to the shiny Harley motorcycle. The three Neighbor boys are all-American, rough and athletic and loud until late at night, while being well-disciplined, respectful and courteous. Model citizens and meat hunters in training. They are like a well-manicured lawn, earthy and smooth, and on display.
We have a boy and a girl, Lewis and Emma. Emma is a flower garden, sweet smelling, sunny and colorful; display-worthy herself. Lewis is a babbling brook, flitting from one adventure to the next, taking sharp corners, racing over rocks and down hills, sparkling and free. Try to catch him, but he’ll slide through the hands; there is too much to do and see. This boy is tough to discipline, as tough as he is to hold. And yet he embodies laughter and creativity and abandon. But he can tend to mess up well-manicured lawns.
Consider his run-ins with Mr. Neighbor. We soon began to realize that when we saw Mr. Neighbor walk from his back yard to ours, we were not in for good news. The first time he made the trek was when Lewis was about 5. It seems Lewis was playing with the Neighbor boys on the playset until he decided he was hungry. He walked into their house (a Donley family no-no), and began searching for an adult (good!). He heard water running in the bathroom, an under-construction room with no doors. Lewis walked in, pulled back the shower curtain where Mrs. Neighbor was vulnerable and drippy, and said “Can I have an apple?”
Mr. Neighbor thought we should know.
Another time, Mr. Neighbor traversed the span from Shangri-Lawn to our mole motel, carrying a ziplock bag containing some unknown substance. Apparently Lewis was playing with Ray’s sons, when he decided the need to defecate was upon him. Being a man of the earth, Lewis decided to fertilize the soil rather than interrupting his adventures by entering the comforts of suburban facilities.
Ray thought we should have proof.
And then there was the incident we call The Crush. This time it was Lewis who made his way across the span to our yard, with a spring in his step. He entered our home through the deck and passed by my chair where I was working. I stopped him. “Lewis, what have you been doing?” “Nothing,” he said with wide-eyes and a mouth like a circus clown, orange fructose paint surrounding his lips.
“What have you been drinking?” “Nothing,” came his reply. “Then why is your mouth orange?” “I don’t know,” said my red-cheeked, citrus-lipped fibber.
“Lewis,” I said, my tone lowering parentally, “have you been drinking orange soda?” He was caught. We do not keep pop in the house, but we know that Lewis adores Orange Crush over all other sodas. “Where did you get it?” I asked.
Prying the nails from the solid planks of his deceit, I learned that he had gone over to Mr. Neighbor’s back patio and opened a cooler reserved for an upcoming barbecue, pulled out his favorite drink and taken healthy, fizzy, guilty swallows. As he realized that his act amounted to stealing, his lower pumpkin-colored pouter began to pooch, and tears filled his eyes. We mutually agreed that the only way to make this right was to confess to Mr. Neighbor.
The trajectory of truth had turned the other way as we took a death-gallows walk over to Ray’s house. He was not home, and the date of execution was stayed, prolonging our agonies. It is one thing to roll our eyes at Mr. Neighbor’s perfectionism, and another to be in need of his mercy. I felt like I was more guilty than Lewis, for not teaching him right from wrong.
The hour came later in the day, when we saw movement across the canyon separating life from death. I held my son’s hand as we made our way across. My thoughts turned to my little man, who was already tearing up. How long this walk must have been for him. I was proud of him, and hurting for him.
I flashed back to when I was 8 and my dad and I made a similar trek. I had taken a dime from my father’s change dish and headed to the neighborhood store to buy some candy. It was after school, and I was hungry for something sweet and good. My eye was caught by a gumball machine that had little trinkets in plastic bubbles for a dime. I looked at all the small shiny toys, and wanted something cool. I deposited my dime, turned the lever and lifted the door to find a massively lame, stupid, girly toy, and it made me mad. I had wasted my dime (which was not my dime), and my stomach was even angrier with hunger.
I went up to the lady at the cash register and said, “I lost my dime in that gumball machine.” She looked at me suspiciously, but reached in the register and gave me a new dime, with which I bought the most substantial sugary snack I could buy. Stomach satisfied, I headed home.
Around the dinner table that night, I told my story. My dad’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth as he realized I was telling him that I stole, not once but twice, from him and from the store. It had not occurred to me consciously what I had done until the words hit my father’s face. He put his fork down and told me to get my jacket; we were going back to that store.
This moment was happening to me again as I was walking with my son across the lawn.
Dad and I arrived at the dime store during the early evening rush, and I had to wait in line to meet the same lady I had met earlier. He had given me another dime to pay the debt, and it felt so weighty in my pocketed hand, and I imagined all the eyes in the busy store were on me. Finally, I reached the lady, and tears were streaming down my face. I said, “The gumball machine wasn’t broken,” and handed her the dime. My dad was in the corner, and as I see his face in my memory, I think there was something in his eyes remembering some walk in his past, a moment of truth for him.
Now we were walking to Mr. Neighbor’s door, knocking, and we were face to face with the Lewis’ cash register lady. We sat down, and in the halting voice of a repentant, tearful 6-year-old, the confession was made.
I was so proud of this son of mine that I barely heard the prolonged speech of Mr. Neighbor, who used adult words like, “transgressions, atonement, trustworthy, disappointed” as Lewis’ eyes glazed over. Every word of his sermon were aimed at me as much as Lewis, and I was irritated. I knew the time for application of lessons would be happening in the future, but for now, Lewis had slain the giant of fear, confessed his wrong, and survived.
We walked back home still hand in hand, with my dad in my memory, and my dad’s dad in his, back to safety. We remember these moments, not because of the sermon we received, but because of the love that holds our hands while we do the right thing.

Lewis, age 9
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