Jan Hanson

My new neighbor is out there again, this time plunking weeds from his flower beds into a plastic
bucket. Yesterday he used his shrieking leaf blower to wreak havoc on his six-foot-square
AstroTurf lawn, sending yellowed magnolia tree remnants flying into the street. When he and his
wife moved into our retirement community of manufactured homes a month ago, I said hello on
the sidewalk. We chatted about where we used to live. He said: We downsized from a five-
bedroom house on a half-acre in the foothills. What we used to do. I said: I was regional director
of human resources for a hotel company. Now as I see him through my window working with
determination to have a leaf-free patch of green and nothing growing in the flower beds except
flowers, I watch two other people walking slowly by in the street. The man pushes a walker, the
kind you can turn around and sit in if you get tired. His feet don’t leave the ground as he shuffles
on the pavement. The woman walking with him wears a sun hat and rests her left hand on the
man’s shoulder. I wonder what they left behind when they moved here. I wonder if—after
downsizing and leaving careers—they used a leaf blower on their lawn, or pulled weeds in their
flower bed. Or sewed pillow shams for the extra bed their grandchildren slept in when they
visited, or filled hummingbird feeders with nectar and waited—watching the feeders swing
lightly in the breeze, hoping the hummingbirds would come.