Then I got married and moved to another city not too far away. I loved our "starter house" and the neighbors we had there, but eventually decided we needed more room and a better school system. We looked for months and months, and finally wound up right back where I started.
And I don't mean just in the same city that I grew up in. I literally live one street over my childhood home. We didn't plan it that way, but after walking into the house, we knew instantly that this one was going to be ours- maybe it was the location, maybe it was the full bar in the great room....
But what makes a good location? Is it really the schools, or the proximity to where you work, or the fact that the homes in that area have a good resale value? I think those are important, yes, but a good location can also be termed such due to people.
Yes, people. Neighbors. Remember those? Sometimes I think that we have become a culture that has lost the beauty of the what the term "neighborhood" really means. We get so busy in our own lives and spend less and less time outside that the beauty of being neighbors many times gets lost. And younger people today are so "plugged in" that they struggle with real communication, and I worry about whether or not they will even know HOW to be a good neighbor.
Our neighbors in our starter home were great- I can't tell you how many stories I have of sitting on porches and in driveways, drinking beer and letting the kids play. I owned a business for a time with a neighbor- we had a blast. We made the World's largest Slip and Slide one summer from tarps, a garden hose, and dish soap that ran 3 front yards long. We wrapped each other's presents from Santa and wrote the Santa notes so it would be in a different handwriting. I would come home from a long 12-hour shift at work and a neighbor would have a cold beer and hot meal for me to eat while we talked on the porch. My step-son's best man in his wedding was a neighbor. And I got to pin a neighbor that I had watched grow up from a little girl as she graduated nursing school.
Now I live in a different neighborhood. The houses are farther apart, and there aren't big front porches for people to hang out on. But we still manage to not forget how to be neighborly. I have a neighbor down the road that has helped me multiple times with entertaining by letting me borrow tables, platters, centerpieces, etc.We were gonna go shopping last night, but wound up sitting on the couch for over 3 hours, happily talking about anything and everything. I have another nieghbor who has taken my kid to her house when he accidentally came home on the bus instead of going to daycare. And I have a neighbor across the street whose kids have grown up with my youngest son- playing in each other's yards and houses, riding the school bus together, etc. They have watched my kid when my husband had to take me to the hospital at 3 in the morning, and I have taken their oldest to the bus stop so they didn't have to wake their little one up. Because being a neighbor is more than just living close by to someone and waving when you pull out of the driveway.
Today I was out shoveling the driveway after (another) round of snow hit our area. I was just getting started when my nighbor across the street came home in his truck with his snow blower in the back. Without saying a word, he got the snow blower out of his truck and came over and started snowblowing my driveway. He stopped and we wound up talking for a quite a while to catch up. So what started out as a chore that I was not looking forward to turned into a pleasant reminder of the beauty of what a neighborhood can be.
So my picture today is of my lovely, snowless driveway. To quote one of my favorite childhood TV hosts, " It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood".
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