Introduction

We arrived in suburbia, ants as big as lobsters crawling up our front porch, neighbors bearing chocolate chip cookies and freshly picked berries, a smoking oil burner and absolute darkness on the street once the sun set. There are no bars to walk to, no cafes to pop into, no boulevards on which to stroll. If you want to get there, get in the car. We are masters of our own domain, no longer tethered to a landlord, though we are at the mercy of a host of service people: car mechanics, plumbers, electricians, handymen, oil deliverymen, tree pruners, exterminators, garbage collectors. And the list continually expands. There is the House, our shelter, our beehive of activity, and there is the outside: actual beehives, and hornets, mosquitoes, spiders, ticks and other creatures of nature. It is like we live in a very elaborate camp grounds. We have locks on the doors to keep out animals and men, but is that enough? There are so many doors now, and windows. Our life has changed. We just don’t know where these changes will lead.