Desperate Housewife?

When you live in any neighborhood for long enough you get to know its rhythms. You know when the folks next door get a new car. You watch the latest renovations as they change the look of the house down the street. Over the years, you see the kids grow up and leave home. In New England, most of these neighborhood changes are noticed in the springtime, when we emerge from our long winter indoors. This year, there was a significant change next door, although it took several weeks to actually dawn on us.

These particular neighbors have a built-in swimming pool that requires regular maintenance once the cover comes off early in the swimming season. For the last several years, these duties were handled by a sandy-haired man, who would pace the sides of the pool with his long handled net, skimming the surface to lift out the occasional insect and leaf. At the same time, he would seemingly keep an eye on the two young kids and the pretty red-haired wife, who were often nearby.

This spring, several weeks of pool maintenance had passed when I began to notice a different guy performing these duties. He is dark haired and slender, and most definitely not the same person we've seen in the past. For a while I figured he was a house guest, but then I noticed the sandy-haired man was never there.

Wisteria Lane has had nothing on us over the past few weeks as we speculated on the missing man and the continuing presence of the mysterious new one. Where did he come from? What was his relationship to the family? Part of the mystery was solved about a week or so ago when I saw the dark haired man lean over to kiss the woman of the house as they did yardwork together - it wasn't a deep, soulful kiss, but rather the sweet peck of two people who are in a relationship.

So what happened to the first guy? Was he indeed the loving husband and father, as he appeared? Was she the wronged woman, or is she actually a floozie who takes up with a different man every few years? Whose fault is it that the first relationship fizzled? Did it actually fizzle? The various alternatives will keep us speculating for the rest of the summer. And, come the winter, I'll have to see who does the snow-blowing.

Now that is love.