There is a house on Matthias Avenue that stands apart from all its neighbors,

not by virtue of its color, shape, or size, but rather for its placement on the street.
The street is an altogether flat one, except for one little bump—a rather large
bump, really—that manifests itself in a tall grassy hillock, and that is where the
strange house sits. It is, by virtue of this hillock, the tallest house, and from its
large round window with its triple-paned glass, you can see the top of the roof of
every other house. It is rather absurd, really, when you see it—a line of straight,
perfectly reasonable houses, and then—bump!—a house on a hill in the middle of
it all. And then life (and Matthias Avenue) resumes going in a straight line.

It is common for every street to have its noisy, argumentative couple, who
continue their shouting late at night; a family with a dog; and the reclusive
bachelor who stays mostly to himself. But nowhere in the list of expectations one
might have when moving into a neighborhood, comes a house that rises up tall
above you—an unsightly pimple on the otherwise very normal, smooth skin of
Matthias Avenue.

No one bothers knocking on the door of this odd house (perfectly normal in
every way except for its location); it is simply too much work clambering up the
steep side of the hill upon which it sits contently. The postman puts the mail in a
mailbox at the bottom of the hill, and can be counted on to whistle, looking up at
the house, and say, “Good riddance.” The boys on the newspaper route have a
game by which they see who can throw the newspaper farthest up toward the house
before it either rolls back down, or settles in the grass. If it settles in the grass, then
that is that; the paper is delivered. No one bothered knocking on the door of this
odd house…that was, except for me.

I was in third grade when my family first moved to Matthias Avenue. We

lived in the house next to the house on the hill, and I was always infinitely curious
about who might live there. I asked around, but everyone seemed to have
conflicting opinions. They would argue on and on, too. Some would insist hotly
that they knew for sure, from eyewitness research, that it was a middle-aged
woman with a baby; some said, that it was by no means the middle-aged woman, it
simply had to be a young couple and that was that; yet others shook their heads
sagely and said, no, no, the youngsters were all wrong, it was an old man. With
such contradictory statements, I decided to find out for myself. I had the perfect
opportunity—I’d just begun selling cookies to the neighbors, and surely I could
find out by knocking on the door?

So I brought my clipboard, pen, and sheet of paper with the types of cookies
I was selling—chocolate chip, mint, peanut butter, and sugar—and courageously, I
climbed up the hillock. It was slippery with the dew on the grass and I got the hem
of my dress more than a little wet. When I got up to the top, I stared out and looked
over the neighborhood and potently wished that I could fly—for here would be the
perfect launching spot. I turned around to gaze at the house. Surely I had seen it
enough from the ground, but that was looking up at it, not eye level. I noticed that
it had a porch in the front with a wind chime and some potted flowers hanging on
it; there was a small mat in front of the door that said “Welcome.” I tentatively
stepped onto the porch, faced the ordinary whitewashed door, and knocked.

I waited half a minute before I heard scrambling inside, and a middle-aged

woman with a baby in her arms raced down the stairs. She peered out the window
at me and opened the door.

“Yes?” she said impatiently, bouncing the baby as it began to fuss.

I was so startled by the veracity of Timmy the newspaper boy’s claim that a
middle-aged woman with a baby lived inside the house (Timmy, of all people, that
congenital liar!), that I stood gaping like a fish for a moment before I got my voice
back.

“Er, yes, ma’am,” I mumbled. “I was selling cookies, and I was wondering
—”

The wrinkled little baby began to fuss, before shrieking with the vocal cords
of a lion. I could barely hear myself talk over the noise. The mother frantically
tried to soothe the baby, but its cry got louder and louder.

“That’s alright, I’ll—uh—come back later,” I said hurriedly, backing out and
racing down the hill. I slammed into Timmy, the newspaper boy, on my way down.
He was older and bigger than I was, but I still managed to knock him over.

“Ack! Watch where you’re going!” he shouted, pushing me off him. “You
look like you’ve seen a ghost. So? Was I right?”
 “Yes, amazingly,” I said gleefully. “It was a woman and a baby. I’m going
to come back later, though—I didn’t sell them any cookies!”

Timmy scoffed derisively, as he knew that the newspaper route job was far
superior to any cookie salesmanship skills of mine, and after tossing the paper into
Mr. Burris’s driveway—hitting the rhododendrons, as usual—he waved to me and
strode off.

I was so pleased with my detective work that I forgot to go back that day,
but instead had to return the next day early in the morning. I climbed up the hill
with the veteran attitude of a trekker, and knocked on the door, cookie clipboard in
hand. I was shocked to see that the woman with the baby did not answer the door,
but rather an old—grandfatherly age—man. He had hair-sprouting ears, white hair,
and a beard which went all around his face. Surely he was not married to the lady
with the baby? Who was it that had told me an old man lived in the house? There
was a whole group of people who had said that.

“Uh—hello,” I said.

“What?” he asked, cupping his ear.

“Hello!” I said, louder this time. “I’m selling cookies.”

“What kinds? Do you have peanut butter?” he asked loudly.

“Yes. How many?”

“Two boxes.”

I made a mark on the checklist, glad at least that all the hard climbing had
resulted in a sale, thanked the old man, and wandered back down. How odd—the
people who argued that it was a woman with a baby who lived in the house
(Timmy and the other newspaper boys) always argued the most with the faction
that argued an old man lived in the house (the senior center inhabitants). And yet,
here they were both right!

I forgot about the whole affair until three weeks later, when the cookies
arrived and I realized that I would have to climb up the hill again in order to
deliver the cookies and collect payment. I knocked on the door, ready for either the
woman with her baby or the old man, and I was utterly shocked to see not the
woman, nor the old man, nor even the young couple some mentioned, but a little
boy, maybe five or six, open the door. No one had mentioned this one!

“Er—I was delivering some cookies to—uh—” I realized it would be

impolite to say “the old man,” so I took a wild guess and said, “your grandpa?”

“Grandpa!” the little boy shouted.

“I’m in the bathroom!” his grandpa shouted back. I winced.

“Daddy!” the little boy shouted, then. I waited in anticipation to see who his
father was, but a woman shouted back,

“He’s in the tool shed! What is it?”

“Mommy, come over! It’s the cookie girl!”

I laughed at the moniker and waited in anticipation to see whether his

mother was the woman with the baby—then that would all make sense—the
woman with the baby would be the little boy’s mother, the old man his grandfather
—but then out walked a lady who was not the woman with the baby, but a different
one—though she looked slightly similar…it was garbling my mind.

“Oh, hello,” she said warmly, walking over. She was younger than the
woman with the baby, by three or four years at least. “My sister-in-law, Cara—you
probably saw her—she was the one with the baby—she mentioned you. Felt very
bad that Susie started crying in the middle of your visit! We haven’t heard much
from the neighbors, except for you, to tell you the truth. Won’t you come in?”

I walked in, trying to piece together everyone’s relationship in my mind, and

barely looking around. I sat down on a brown couch and the little boy’s mother sat
down next to me. That was when the woman with the baby emerged from another
room, the grandfather walked out of the bathroom, and two men walked in through
a screen door in the kitchen.

“This is our neighbor, everyone—oh, what’s your name, little girl?”

“Ethel,” I supplied.
 “Ethel just came over to visit and—”

“With those peanut butter cookies, I hope,” grumbled the old man.

“Mmm,” said the little boy, licking his lips. The adults all laughed.

“Those are good, aren’t they. I’ve been looking forward to them,” said one
of the men, conversationally.

Meanwhile, my eyes were darting back and forth trying to see how they
were all connected—the woman with the baby was the younger woman’s sister-in-
law, which meant that the younger woman’s husband—and which one was he?—
was the brother of the woman with the baby and the grandfather was his father and
so the grandfather of the little boy who was his son…it made my head spin.

“Let me introduce you to everyone, Ethel,” said the woman with the baby—
Cara. “I’m Cara, and this is my husband, Denny,” she gestured to the older of the
two men, “my baby, Susie, and my brother, Rick. Penelope is my sister-in-law—he
and Penelope got married a few years ago, and this is their son, Neil. Susie and
Neil are cousins, and this is Grandpa Robert.”

The woman with the baby…the old man…the young couple…

So everyone had been right, in a way, and yet everyone had been wrong. We
had just read “The Blind Men and the Elephant” in Language Arts—I had recited it
—and I could not help but mouth silently,

It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind

Perhaps I was not from Indostan, and the house was not an elephant, but I’d
certainly been curious.

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
 Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Timmy had argued with the seniors that it was a woman with a baby, not an old
man (even after they berated him for lack of respect for his elders)…my next-door
neighbors to the right had argued that it was a young couple…they each held on to
their opinions “exceeding stiff and strong.”
And then I remembered the moral:

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,

The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

I smiled secretly as I nodded politely to the inhabitants of the house on the hill. I
was no longer a blind man feeling the ear or leg or tail—I had seen the elephant,
and I had said hello. And that was better than anyone else on Matthias Avenue.