Others are absent for other reasons. The Friedman family across the street is moving into one of their rental properties. Their younger son Adam has some neurological problems in the area of autism (but not that), and now that he has a diagnosis, they are leaving their three story plus basement behind for one of their rental flats. I ran into Bruce about a week ago, having noticed that he wasn't around as often--Jackie and Viv had both noticed as well, since Viv spends most of her days on her porch swing now that they've moved back in after years of saying they were moving, or not moving, or taking care of her mother or selling that house or whatever it was. They're back and she's a porch sitter extraordinaire. So much so that she noticed an absence instead of a presence.
"Are the Friedmans still on the block?" she asked Zelda. And Zelda asked me. We were so afraid it was a foreclosure or avoiding a foreclosure--we know they had property around the south side and couldn't think of any other reason why they would leave their huge house and move into a two bedroom flat with three kids.
"Adam just needs to be on one floor," Bruce explained. I felt so bad about this, knowing they've been hunting down a diagnosis for years. Bruce is older than my parents, although you'd never know, and with his first wife he has kids older than me. This is a second family for him and I don't know why he doesn't drop from exhaustion.
So they've moved in behind me, a few houses down (two doors down from the tent folk). They own the 4-family, so that's an easy fix, but I hope they're doing this in the short term. It's a tight space, especially with a big dog.
Tonight I was picking cucumbers for more pickles and I heard Adam, Casey, and Kenna riding bikes behind me. They're still there. Just between a different set of trees.
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