A Good Neighbor

Abby Arora

 

Boston is raining an unreal amount the day I venture to my friend Saia’s apartment. As I walk furiously fast with my hood pulled tightly over my head, I somehow catch a quick glimpse at a street full bustling shops and cafés through the sheets of rain. My GPS starts beeping, desperately trying to tell me to cross onto the busy street. I immediately notice as I cross that even in the rain, many people who are my age I realize are suddenly surrounding me, also walking busily with their hoods over their heads. I try to take in my surroundings as much as I can but the sheets of rain prove to be too much, and I quickly pull my hood back down and make a beeline towards the apartment.

 

After arriving at the apartment, Saia makes me hot chocolate, telling me “rain accompanies hot chocolate or else it isn’t fun anymore.” As I make myself comfortable on her couch, I observe the way she bustles around her kitchen, laughing and giggling as she points out her roommates and boyfriend who are pictured in magnets on her fridge. She seems like the quintessential happy college student, verging on the edge of real adulthood but still blissfully happy with youth.

 

However as she begins to tell me about her experience at the beginning of her career at Neighborhoods Café, I soon realize that my current impression of Saia is not how she was a year ago.

 

Saia begins to tell me about her move to Boston from her old school in Ithaca, New York. She explains to me that she moved to go to a better school for theater and to be with her long time boyfriend who had been living in Boston for the past year. As her eyes start to dart around with what I perceive to be a sense of anxiety, she begins to recount how her first weeks in Boston were mostly spent in bed completely devastated by her abrupt breakup.

Without any friends or family in the area, she was left alone, coping with being broken up with by her boyfriend of four years. At that moment her roommates awkwardly tried to help her, explaining that they barely knew anything about her and therefore felt helpless and strange. She longed for the comfort of her friends from home.

After a couple weeks of feeling depressed and lonely, Saia realized that she needed to begin looking for work to sustain her. She pulled herself out of bed to explore her neighborhood; she decided to submit her resume to everyplace that she could. As days passed, she was continually rejected from multiple jobs, which only furthered her depressive state of mind. Finally, she got a call from a local coffee shop, Neighborhoods.

Saia pauses to sip her hot chocolate.

 

“It’s so strange to me how life can go from being so shitty to so good only in a matter of six months. All it takes is one nice person with good intentions to give you that break that you need. What trips me out is that I didn’t even know that Betsy was the angel I was looking for. I thought she was just some annoying lady.” She took a moment to giggle to herself. “Sometimes the biggest blessings are in disguise.. Or at least that’s what my mom always says.”

When Betsy first called Saia, she asked her to come in for a preliminary meeting.

 

Three days later Saia went into Neighborhoods and ended up staying for three hours. Betsy asked Saia about her friends, her family, her old school, and why she moved. Everything that Saia had been holding in came flooding out, and Betsy took it all in. She told Saia that Neighborhoods was going to be her family away from home, and that she was going to be immersed into a new community that would help her not feel so alone.

 

The part of Fenway that Neighborhoods is located on is surrounded by college kids. Fenway is between a lot of college campuses, which makes it an easy and accessible place to live for many people. I think this makes the area extremely vibrant and cultural, full of different types of people all trying to figure out their futures and lives. It also makes the older population (that consists of people like Betsy) more valued in the area. I found that a lot of the restaurant owners on the street of Neighborhoods are all very found of their college employees. As I sat down for a drink or a meal in a sushi restaurant, a Mexican grill, and an ice cream shop; each employee or waiter continually repeated how working in Fenway has made them feel more integrated into a community. There is a sense of camaraderie between all of the workers that I never seen before in a workspace. It seems that Fenway has always been a neighborhood that consists of a strong community, whether that be from the strong sports community that is inspired by the close location of the ballpark, or the large population of college students that have begun to culminate in that area.

 

As I walk into Neighborhoods I am immediately struck by the homey wallpaper, and comforting vibe that exists in the space. The place is packed, with six people all crammed into each tiny white round table, all sipping on drinks and eating delicious looking crepes. I see Saia working as a barista and giggling with her co-worker, Caitlin. When she sees me, she waves me down and ushers me over to her.

 

“Let’s all go out to Tommy’s tonight and get a Margarita! Caitlin and Brian are having people over after our shift ends at 10.”

 

As we begin to plan our night I see an older woman’s face peek out from behind the door that separates the backspace from the rest of the shop. The woman has dark black hair and wrinkles on the sides of her eyes that give me the impression she has laughed a lot in her lifetime. I imagine that this must be Betsy. Her warm brown eyes survey the space, seeming to check that everything is moving smoothly. She carries a sense of pride, a calm sort of loving type of pride that reminds me of my mom. It comforted me to realize that in a city where many kids are thousands of miles away from home, new families can still be built.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources

 

"Fenway Offers Landmarks, Culture, and Play Spaces all within Arm's Reach." Boston

GlobeMar 29 2009. ProQuest. Web. 25 Mar. 2015 .

 

Landmarks Commission, Boston. "Fenway/Kenmore." (1996): n. pg. The Environment

Department. Web.

 

Kaiser, Johanna. "Boston Community Centers, Libraries Offer School Vacation Activities."

Boston.com. The New York Times, 21 Feb. 2012. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.

 

Saia Meyerhoff. Personal Communication. March 24th, 2015.

 

A bit about Abby 

 

Abby is a freshman at Emerson College pursuing a BFA in Musical Theater. She is also a member of Accappellics Anonymous on campus. Raised in San Francisco, California, Abby is a proud supporter of the Giants. She also is a documentary geek, and loves all types of cheese.