“A letter to My Community” - Film & Letter Commissioned by PBS

I Wrote a PBS Commercial!

Well, not exactly.

What I wrote was a "Letter to my Community", along with a few other similarly-themed stories & explorations commissioned by PBS12. Coming from a fiction background, I was at first challenged and uncomfortable by being tasked with direct, confessional-style storytelling. I was also intimidated as someone who lives in the suburbs - what did I know about the word "community?" I decided that's where I'd start: in the uncertainty, the insecurity, and the small moments that I'd collected around my neighborhood over the past few years.

I had no idea what would become of my pieces while I was writing them. Even when I was brought into the studio to record an excerpt from the end of my letter, I still didn't know how it would look or sound once put into production.

When I first saw this commercial, I felt emotions. Remember those? Like, really strong ones. It was one of those cinematic moments that don't come very often in a lifetime, where you're forced to realize that your art and words have meaning. That what we do and say is impacting our community at all times, whether we notice it or not.

I've got more recording on the agenda this spring, this time with video (oh god), maybe with some dancers and other artists. I'm excited, I'm scared, I'm inspired, I'm insecure, (I'm Meredith Brooks?), but most of all for the first time, I'm awakened to what community means in my own life.

A Letter to My Community - Patricia McCrystal

When I first moved into a rental house in the Arvada suburbs three years ago, I didn’t think “community” was a word that applied to me. While my friends in Denver had locally-owned coffee shops they could walk to, we had drive-thru Starbucks’ on every block. While Denverites reconnected with neighbors over community garden plots, I silently watered my raised garden bed at the back of my yard, hidden from sight behind a 6-foot wooden fence.

When I walked my dog through my neighborhood, I was often the only person outside. I didn’t know any of my neighbors’ names, and they only rang my doorbell to let me know it was illegal to leave my trash and recycling bins on the sidewalk—they needed to go in the street—or that the smoke from our barbeque was stinking up their house. They went out of their way to tell me these things “because we’re neighbors!”, and only then would attempt a smile before leaving. This was us connecting.

One day in early 2018, inspired by too many aggressive If-you-don’t-like-it-here-then-leave-style bumper stickers spotted on the backs of SUVs that seemed to patrol the suburbs, declaring their speed and size to and from the grocery store and gym and mall, my boyfriend and I bought a sign for our front yard. It was blue and white, with a heart in the middle that bore the pattern of the American flag. In bold font it read, “Hate Has No Home Here”, the message repeating in 5 different languages.

A few months later, I was walking my dog when an elderly neighbor waved to me from his front lawn. He was around 75, with a Broncos t-shirt and a Vietnam Vet baseball cap. He asked if I lived in the house with the sign out front. I said yes and braced for his response, my expectations mired in stereotypes about elderly Vets in the suburbs.

“I really appreciate that sign,” he said

I let him know we had extras, and he asked me to bring one over the next day.

Later that year, when I was driving home from work, I turned onto my street and saw another copy of our sign in front of the house at the end of the block. I slowed my car, amazed, and at that moment a woman stepped out of the house, toddler on her hip. It was the same neighbor who had warned me about my trash cans. She shuffled her daughter onto her other hip and waved as I passed by. In my rearview mirror, I watched her load her toddler into a stroller for a walk, seeing only then how my trash cans had blocked her and her daughter’s path months ago.

Shortly after this, my boyfriend burst into the house after walking the dog.

“The next-door neighbors—” he began. I waited for what new grievance the older couple next door had aired: Did they still hate the smell of burgers on the grill? Did we laugh too loudly in the driveway? Had a butterfly flown from our backyard into theirs?

“They just put up our sign in their front yard.”

When you drive through my neighborhood, you see much of the same: middle-class houses lined up like straight teeth, green lawns, sturdy cars ferrying families to school, to the office, to the massive grocery store with massive fruit and massive aisles so our elbows never brush.

But when you look closer, you see mismatched families in quiet conversation: a single mother and her daughter, an elderly couple, a house full of 30-year-olds and their pets, and a Vietnam vet, all looking for a sign that yes, we are all watching each other, and yes, what we say and do in our neighborhood matters.

We are all looking for an invitation into each other’s lives. We do not want to be bumper stickers, yelling out declarations while moving at a velocity so great that we don’t see the faces of those we pass. We are all longing for one another, even from behind our six-foot fences, from inside our SUVs, and behind our computer screens. We are all looking for answers to the same questions, “Am I seen? Am I heard? Am I welcome?”

How will your neighborhood answer?

Watch the video below!