I’d been noticing something weird outside my neighbor’s house for weeks now.
At first I saw it only in passing, once. I was walking down the street, as usual, not really paying attention to anything, when something hanging near the house caught my eye. Lined up almost perfectly, there were several long pale strips laid out in the sun.
I slowed down, looked at them for a second and walked on.
Probably nothing I told myself.
But they were still there the next day.
And to-morrow.
Before long I was looking for them every time I went past the house. Morning walks, afternoon errands, late night strolls, I would look to that same spot to see if those strange things were still hanging there.
And they always were.
In the wind they moved a little, but else they were in the same careful row. I couldn’t figure out what they were. They were too thin to be towels, too pale to be decorations, and too strange-looking to be anything I knew at once.
The more I looked the more I was puzzled.
I knew it wasn’t my business, of course. People do all sorts of things out of their houses. It was perhaps a pastime. Maybe it was a culture thing. Maybe it was something very common that I just didn’t know about.
But my imagination began to do what imagination does best.
I started making up stories in my head.
Maybe they were some sort of dried plant. They could have been strips of cloth, drying in the sun. Perhaps they were the remains of a craft. I even thought at one point that they were something much stranger, but I felt silly for thinking that.
And here’s the funny thing about curiosity. Your mind fills in the gaps when you have no answer. And sometimes the answers it generates are much more dramatic than real life.
After a while I started timing my walks, although I didn’t confess it even to myself. I would take the path that went by that house, just to see it again. Every time I walked by I would take a quick peek, pretending I was uninterested.
But I was wondering.
So very curious
The mystery was part of my everyday life. After seeing the strange pale strips hanging in the sun, I would leave the house with more questions than I had before.
Curiosity at length got the better of embarrassment.
One day I saw another neighbour outside and asked. I attempted nonchalance.
“You’ve seen those strange things outside that house?” I asked.
The neighbour looked in the direction I was pointing, then he started to laugh.
It was no small laugh. The kind of laugh that tells you the mystery in your head is probably much bigger than the actual answer.
My face got hot.
Then they did explain.
That was homemade dough.
More specifically, it was drying sun-kissed noodles.
That was all.
No mystery. Not a weird ceremony. No secret project. No scary story.
Noodles only.
The answer was so simple, I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or embarrassed. For weeks I had passed that house, wondering silently what strange thing was going on there. Meanwhile, someone inside was probably just cooking food the way their family had for years.
All that silent tension, all that curiosity, all those dramatic thoughts — and the truth was dinner.
Once I knew it was all different.
The same strips that before had seemed strange now seemed entirely logical. They were no longer disturbing. They were normal. Even reassuring. Somebody had made the dough and rolled it into noodles and, naturally, had put it out to dry in the sun.
It was a reminder that many things seem strange only because we do not yet understand them.
Sometimes the things you do are normal to you but seem odd to an outsider. A tradition, a recipe, a habit or a family way can seem mysterious to the person who has not seen it before.
I learned something simple but useful that day: not all mysteries are dark. Sometimes it is homemade food.
Now, every time I pass that house and see noodles drying in the sun, I look. I just can’t do it. Now I smile instead of wondering.
I imagine someone inside getting ready to make a meal. I can almost smell the fresh pasta, warm sauce and a family gathered together. What once felt strange now feels human.
And truthfully, that makes the whole thing better.
I was outside for weeks creating monsters in my head.
So my neighbour was just making dinner the whole time.