Up on the Roof

Just over here, being weird for the neighborhood

I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you. –Fred Rogers

I swear I don’t love the drama. It loves me. –Taylor Swift

The first day we looked at the house we now live in, I had the eerie sensation that someone was watching me. I looked up and saw the lace curtains of the neighbors’ house move, and distinctly saw a face behind them. My breath caught in my throat. 

A few minutes later, as we surveyed the yard, I looked up to see a man, standing outside the same house and giving us the Paddington Hard Stare. It was unnerving. If I were sitting on my couch watching this in a movie, I would grab a throw pillow and start inching it toward my face to avoid the jump scare. Or I might shout at the screen, “Don’t move there! Don’t take that house! Danger! Danger!!!!” 

But actually, I’d read about this. Some Germans, especially older ones, have a proclivity to keep an eye on the neighborhood–or to put it better, enjoy unabashed staring. So ignoring my reflexes to turn and run, I gave him my trademark Friendly Vibes Smile & Wave. In return, he waved back and though he didn’t exactly smile, he looked a shade less intimidating before he went back inside. I took that as a good sign, and at least this place wasn’t haunted. So we rented the house.

In the months since, he has never been unkind but also never exactly friendly. I’ve tried to gauge what I’m supposed to do–take him cookies? Formally introduce myself? (Do Germans like that?)--and wondered more than once if he outright despised us. We certainly brought chaos right next door.

And he, in turn, has watched us–a lot. To be fair, with seven people in one house for most of the summer when the two oldest kids were home, we’ve provided ample entertainment. Until our gate was installed, there were regular traipses through the neighborhood, searching for our dachshund who had escaped yet again and trying to lure her out of hiding by calling, “Mabel! MAAAABELLL!! Want a treat?? Treeeeaaatt??” Without fail, there are constantly kids’ fights starting for the most bizarre reasons, unique experiments with gardening (I’ll tell you about our pumpkins another day), and me sprinting to the clothesline to grab laundry during a sudden downpour. Even just listening to us as we live the European way–sans air conditioning, with all windows open–has to be pretty hilarious given the number of times someone in the house has yelled out, “I NEED TOILET PAPER!! CAN YOU BRING ME TOILET PAPER?!” 

Last week, though, we took the show to a whole new level. It was the night before school started. Matt left early that morning for a work trip, and I got the kids up and out the door for church. We were about to walk into the sanctuary, just a couple minutes late this time, when it suddenly occurred to me that I had left our back door open. I considered doing a U-turn and watching church online, but instead chose to stay. Thus I spent the entire service panicking about either Mabel discovering another way out of our fence, or, of course, someone stealing everything we owned, strolling out the back door with it because I’d made it so easy. 

All was as it should be, thankfully, when we returned, dog and belongings in their rightful places. But by golly, I’d learned my lesson and wasn’t about to repeat it! When we left for our walk that evening, I made a special point to close the sliding door all the way. As soon as I heard the door click, though, I looked down for my keys and realized… I had just locked us out.

It was the worst timing! I didn’t know who to call–landlord? locksmith?–and anyway, it was Sunday, and everything is closed on Sundays in Germany. Getting the kids to bed on time with all their back-to-school jitters was already going to be a challenge, and now this??!! I wanted to cry.

Suddenly Lilly remembered something. “My window is open,” she said. “I could climb up the roof of our patio and get in.” 

“No! Absolutely not! That’s a terrible idea!” I told her. I knew this from experience.

When I was eight years old, we moved into a new house in Bangladesh. Many homes there had flat ledges just below the roofs to keep rain from going in the windows. One day, my older sister Jenny and I went onto our roof (houses are built with flat roofs to make adding on easier). We looked at the ledges jutting out over all the windows and wondered if we could make it all the way around the house by jumping from ledge to ledge. It seemed easy enough, so we climbed onto them and began our journey circumnavigating the house. At the largest gap between ledges, Jenny threw down a challenge she knew I wouldn’t refuse, using the four words that had already, on several occasions, sent me racing toward doom: “I bet you can’t…”

“I bet you can’t get from this ledge to that one,” she said.

“Sure I can!” I scoffed. It wasn’t that far, and besides, there was a light fixed to the wall halfway between the ledges, the perfect handle to support me as I swung my leg across the gap. Reaching out, I took hold of the light. The problem was that electricity in Bangladesh could be… well, a little more unpredictable than in other places. Though the light was turned off, a strong current still flowed through it. As soon as I grabbed the metal “neck” of the fixture, it jolted through me. I flipped upside down, screaming in terror, and briefly saw the look of panic on my sister’s face before I let go and fell to the ground, hitting my mouth on the frame of an open window and landing on my wrist. 

Blood poured down my chin from a gash on my gum as I raced around the house to the front door. Here came my mother, running out, her face pale and eyes wide. Dad followed close behind, looking grim. He scooped me up and carried me to the floor of the living room where he laid me down gently. Through my tears, I saw them both hovering over me.

“Am I gonna die?” I wailed. 

Dad shook his head. “I don’t think so.” There had been an unbroken scream since I grabbed the light, so this was a safe assumption.

Then a new panic seized my heart. “Are you gonna spank me?”¹ 

Though the circumstances were vastly different, this was what I remembered as I stared up at the slanted tile roof above our patio. Desperate ideas floated into my mind. Maybe we could try… nope. Or what about… no. The more I considered it, the faster I realized this was the best of my bad–or rather, nonexistent–options. 

We hauled one of the patio chairs over to the row of cement planters, where the patio ends and our garden begins, and put it on top.

The chair wobbled slightly as Lilly climbed onto its seat, so I tried to hold it sturdy with my arms. There’s a gutter attached to the edge of the roof that adds about five inches before the tile that could support her, so she had to clear that. She reached up…

“I can’t do it!” she said. “It’s still a little too low.” 

“You have to!” I insisted. We looked around. Could we put something on top of the patio chair? She didn’t need that much more height, but we had basically nothing to provide it. The watering can? (“What?? HOW?!”) The bistro table? (“No way. Not sturdy enough.”) “I’ll give you a boost,” I said finally. “Wyatt and Annalee can hold the chair.”

We got in our positions. Wyatt and Annalee pushed down hard on the patio chair, holding it as sturdy as they could, and I tried to push away the nauseating fears of everything that could happen. Worst case scenario: Lilly fell and got seriously injured, and we were locked out and at the hospital. Second worst case: she succeeded without injury to herself but in doing so, the gutter was damaged or tiles came off the roof and they cost an exorbitant amount of money because it turned out they were special tiles made by Peruvian monks or something.  

“Okay, everybody. One… two…” I positioned myself to give Lilly the necessary shove. Just before I said “Three!”, she bent over, shaking with silent laughter. “What?!” She was laughing so hard she couldn’t answer. “Lilly. Come on. We’ve got to do this. It’s getting late.” 

“Our neighbor!” she finally managed to whisper. “He’s outside. He’s watching us. He must think we’re so weird!!” I gave a quick glance over my shoulder and sure enough, he was standing on his back steps, looking intently into our yard. Of course. And I mean… Why wouldn’t he? At this point, if he had a bag of popcorn in his hands, I would not have been surprised. Yes, if there had been any doubt before about our weirdness, it would evaporate now.

Well, anyway, it was show time.

We got back into positions, and on “THREE!” I tried to grab Lilly’s legs and push up. But as it turned out, she had just showered and applied a very slick, buttery lotion, so her legs slipped through my hands. She dissolved into giggles again, and given how utterly ridiculous it all was, I couldn’t help joining her.

“Okay, okay, serious faces.” We tried again and again and again, laughing harder with each failed attempt. Finally, though, we managed to settle down just long enough to coordinate her jump with my push, the lotion having been absorbed by now. Lilly (rather impressively, I might add) hoisted herself onto the roof. She scrambled over the tiles with lightning speed, not breaking a single one and laughing the whole way, and climbed in the wide- open window. 

“Wait, wait!” I stopped her. “I need a picture!” I held up the phone and snapped a photograph for my husband so he could enjoy knowing the trouble we got into while he was away. Then remembering my neighbor, I looked over my shoulder with a sense of dread. Was he judging us? Angry? Suspicious? Rolling his eyes? I had never seen him give us anything even close to a smile—for that matter, I wasn’t even sure he had teeth—and I didn’t hope for it now. But to my thoroughly delighted surprise, he was clapping his hands and laughing hysterically. “We were locked out!” I explained over the fence, not sure how much English he understood because we had never talked. Happily, though, he nodded and gave a thumbs up. 

So that is the story of how Lilly safely and successfully broke into our house and saved the night before school started. But more importantly, it’s the story of the first time my neighbor smiled at me. And even though all my obsessive-compulsive tendencies are now triggered every time I walk out the door (“Do I have my keys? Check three times. Annnnnd one more for good measure!”), I daresay it was worth it.

1. For the record, they did not. They felt I had given myself a big scoop of Natural Consequences.