The neighborhood ties that don't bind

IN TRANSITION #17

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 20, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

It's nearly Thanksgiving and we still have Halloween candy on our kitchen table. In the fruit bowl, embarrassingly enough (though at least to our credit, we have a fruit bowl).

Most of the candy is long gone; what's left are the items that nobody wanted -- a couple of Tootsie Pops, a small bag of Peanut M & M's, the sad remnants of a holiday we were probably too old to be celebrating anyway.

Try as we might, Halloween just wasn't the same as a grown-up. My roommates and I drank a couple of beers out on the front porch of our old triple-decker. We lighted a jack-o-lantern and watched the kids trickle by our quiet little block.

A few boys, 15 to 16, didn't bother saying ''trick or treat" as they stuffed their sacks. Others were so shy and young, they hardly dared to look at us. All in all, we had somewhere between 30 and 40 revelers at our door.

It was my first Halloween as a candy giver rather than receiver. I suppose that reversal was an inevitable part of coming of age, but the holiday seemed particularly confusing to me this year. I had never encountered any of these children before. Who were their parents that they allowed their kids to consume such massive quantities of sugar? And how could they let their children wander about freely talking to strangers like me?

Presumably, just a few decades ago, Halloween made a little more sense. When you know all your neighbors and your neighbors' kids, the celebration could potentially turn into something resembling a block party, something to strengthen community bonds, something that everyone could enjoy together.

Not on my block. The strange candy-gathering ritual came and went so mechanically. The kids, the parents, my roommates and I -- we were all just crudely marking the date by going through the motions.

Little by little, every old triple-decker in my Somerville neighborhood will be renovated and replaced by condos. Already, most of us are grad students, young professionals, people with no real ties to our community. We are relatively transient. Kids are scarce.

Sometimes I'll wave hello to a neighbor or two on my way home from work, but we've never actually met. The insides of their homes will likely remain forever mysterious. I've only spoken to one of the four people who live upstairs above us. (I hear their cats scurrying across the floor every night, but I've never seen them.)

It's the quiet, anonymous loneliness of life in this city that has stuck with me since Halloween. And it's that feeling that lingers weeks after the pumpkins have all rotted and been discarded.

A friend of mine braved Christmas alone last year for the first time, just months after moving to Boston. He said it was the worst experience of his life. He volunteered at a homeless shelter so as to ensure some contact with other human beings.

I'll be with family later this week for Thanksgiving. It's a holiday I skipped out on last fall; I drove up to Montreal with a friend to drink Canadian beer and escape from the stresses and pressures of college.

This year, turkey and stuffing and loved ones close by sounds, well, downright reassuring.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.