I haven’t felt much like blogging or commenting lately. A bad case of Ecclesiastes – vanity vanity, it’s all vanity!
But evidently I’m over that. For now.
I am perplexed and praying tonight. We have new neighbours underneath us. Our walls are not thin. Sure, I can hear the people upstairs vacuuming. Sure, I can hear the guy next door watch Star Wars on his surround sound. But it’s really not too too bad.
And yet almost every night, I hear a small boy yelling and screaming and his mother yelling and screaming right back.
I’ve met our neighbours. It’s a single mother in her thirties and her son. Anne occasionally peers through the slats of our balcony down at him on the grass. He’s about four or five. Seems a typical kid – a little chatty, a little mouthy. Nothing much. Brian knocked on their door once when he was locked out of the building and they nicely let him in. They aren’t very friendly though. We haven’t had much luck chatting them up. Which is odd. Since I gave birth to Joseph downstairs, almost everyone in the building knows who we are and so they always want to chat and see the baby. We know quite a few in our building and have even made a few friends (which is odd for condo buildings, I assure you – we might as well be a lair of vampires for all the socialising that typically goes on in apartments in Canada).
Not every night, but often enough that it’s noticeable. Around eight or nine o’clock, the screaming starts. They scream at each other. They yell. Someone slams doors. Someone seems to be kicking a wall or two. Usually it’s over in about ten minutes. Some nights, it can go on for a while.
One night, I was asleep and I was woken up by the sounds of this: I felt sick to my stomach as I listened to the screaming between a mother and her child go on for almost 20 minutes more. I was alone as Brian was out working.
I didn’t know what to do.
I still don’t.
For all I know, he could be resisting bedtime by throwing fits every night. Or maybe he suffers from some sort of behavioural issue that results in this.
But what if it’s something more? What if there is a child being hurt downstairs?
My heart is in my throat about it. I feel sick to my stomach. I feel helpless.
What do I do? Brian swears that the next time he hears them, he’s going downstairs to knock on the door. And say what? We don’t know. Maybe just let them know we hear them? Maybe ask if everything is okay? Maybe call the child protection agency? Invite them to supper?
I am praying for wisdom tonight.
