Fifteen Feet and a World Apart

As I sit in our hotel room on the last day before we move into our new house, I can't help, but be struck by the contrast between my room on the third floor of our hotel and the third floor of the house across the alley, both with unencumbered views of the other when the curtains aren't drawn.

Our room is a large-ish hotel room, with two double beds pushed together into more of a king, a dorm-sized refrigerator, topped by a 13" television, further topped by our JVC DVD player, my present to Steven on his last birthday. Solid concrete walls and weather stripped windows keep the cool air from the single unit air conditioner from mixing with the heavy heat of the outside air. Cool off-white tiles extend from the bathroom to the right of the door to the 4 x 3 balcony, a railing of adjacent iron rectangles between us and the open space of the alley.

Across the alley, a room equal in size to that of our hotel room is partially shielded from view by a plywood wall that stops a foot from the corrugated tin roof. The balcony stretches a further three feet from the wall, closed in by a railing constructed of 15 boards of varying width and stain, topped by a longer, but similar board, stained and sanded to a smooth finish. The balcony, spanning the width of the house is cluttered with clothes: clean clothes hanging on hangers on the line, wet clothes draped over the railing, dirty clothes in a pile on the floor. A blue and gray striped tarp hangs from rings on an outer line, pulled taunt in the afternoons when heavy rains threaten to flood the inside. A patch of old linoleum tile covers a large portion of the balcony, the floor of the remainder, continuing inside the room, bare plywood. Barely visible in the dim light of the inside, the room appears to be filled with the trappings of everyday living, piled haphazardly in the manner of those sharing a small space among many.

Not to paint my neighbors as paupers, I will add that the second floor underneath the third is tastefully closed off from the outside by a facade of tinted glass, engraved with bamboo and ornamental flowering trees; a sectioned wooden dining table is visible through the open window resting on a darkly stained wood floor.

But the fact still remains that the contrast between the world that I come from, a world that as much as I hate to admit it, follows me wherever I go in the style of my accommodations, my choice of entertainment, my options of communication, the 250+ lbs of possessions lying on the floor of my room is a world apart from the one that lies just 15 feet away.