Thursday, January 23, 2025

 Thursday, January 23, 2025

    I worked in the lower garden, watering the 42 shrubs and blowing the green waste on the driveway from when I trimmed the plumbago. I blew as much as I could between the branches.  It will break down and serve as fertilizer.

    My neighbor had hired a team to replace a rock wall that was right up against a chain link fence that bordered my property.  My neighbor's property is five feet higher than mine at the lower end.  A rock wall had been built there when the houses in this development were built.  They hadn't been cemented into place. The rocks were tumbling, held in place by the chain link fence.  I expected my neighbor to replace the old rocks and build the rock wall to the level of his property or the level with the top of the chain link fence.  Yesterday, I discovered he was building that rock wall ten feet high at the bottom point. My neighbor's property must have been filled in to make it level from front to back. My property was leveled out at the top. The rest is the original slope created by the lava flow.  My neighbor's undeveloped property was never modified one way or another.  Where it abuts my property, a 10-foot rock wall holds the soil in place.   

     The contractor building the wall on my neighbor's property did other work for him. He is an aggressive salesman, close to a con man who bullies people into buying his services.  My neighbor's rock wall could cost in the neighborhood of $75,000.  Building a rock wall over 6 feet without a special permit is illegal. My neighbor does a lot of work on his property without a permit. Some of it will be grandfathered in when the crack-down comes.  Most homes will be dismantled if the county office decides that all unpermitted work must be taken down.  The country made getting a permit a long, complicated, expensive process.  People avoided it. Mike and I had work done that we never permitted.

   My neighbors are immigrants. They're here legally, but all immigrants are concerned now.  I heard Trump was planning to include children born in the USA to immigrants for deportation.  Then I heard it was only the children of illegal immigrants. But hey, we're halfway there; why not go further. I'm reminded of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.  The message: if you live in a world where it's okay to do bad things to others, never assume you won't be next.

    Darby thought my neighbors might have had this massive, expensive rock wall built to enhance their chances of getting green cards.  If you provide employment for others or spend enough money, your chances are better.  I don't know all the details, but it is a challenging course.  I know the story of my parents' naturalization. They applied as soon as they could. My mom arrived here a year and a half after my dad did, and she got her citizenship before he did.  When he applied, the waiting period was five years. When she applied, it had changed; it was only three.  A quick check on the Internet showed that the US government first issued Permanent Resident cards in 1978.  These cards later became known as Green Cards.  My parents arrived in the US in the 1930s. They would never have been issued those cards. It's a scary time for all immigrants these days.

      I only had 4th grade GV today.  Our last session focused on GV's irritation with his five-year-old brother. I recommended he initiate a positive activity with him.  He had. His brother spurned him. GV was devastated.  I asked if he did this with anyone else.  No, just him.  This was hard for me since I had a similar experience with my younger sister as an adult.

   My family has a pattern of younger siblings rejecting the old one.  I didn't resent her at her birth. My problem had been with my parents before she was born. I hoped she would be a solution to the problem. She wasn't.  The realization that my situation would never improve was hard. But I didn't blame her.  In my husband's case, he resented his sister when she was born.  Since Mike's defense was arrogance, ( I called him an equal opportunity arrogator.), there was a long term impact on his sister. In my sister's case, she had to deal with my hysteria and willingness to take on our mom.  It didn't make for a peaceful home life.  Both our sisters disliked us.  Then, it went on to the next generation.  My sister-in-law's younger daughter is angry at her older sister for a slew of things.  I'm not saying Mike and I didn't add to the bad family situation, but we weren't the cause of it.

   But back to GV's problem.  Younger siblings would usually give their eye teeth to have the older sibling's attention.  Older siblings often blow off the younger ones as an annoying pest.  While GV experiences his younger brother that way, he is also sensitive to his baby brother's rejection of him.  I think GV is a delight, but does he have friends his own age?  Does he have a crew to hang with that confirms his value?  I'm almost afraid to ask.  What if he's more comfortable with adults than children his age?  I'm concerned about how to handle it.  His mom says it's just brother issues, but it doesn't have to be that way.  I watch children down the street with a large age gap, six years, and the older brother does play with his younger brother. There's a severely handicapped brother of seven in the mix. Even that brother gets attention from his siblings. I imagine this situation is an unusual one.

   When Joseph, my tenant, got home from work, I told him I heard he was a good teacher.  He teaches the religious education class for the 5th graders on Sundays after Mass.  I can imagine he's a good teacher. He's interested in ideas and loves to learn from others. Being questioned and asking questions isn't seen as a challenge to his point of view but as an opportunity to expand his understanding of the topic.  He's one of the few people I've ever met who feels this way.  Mike didn't even operate this way.  He wasn't intimidated by a question that challenged his thinking, but he didn't welcome it either.