Good Neighbors With No Fences

Next month I will celebrate 28 years of living in my neighborhood. I live on a cove with 5 other houses. We all know and care about each other, but of course that didn’t happen overnight or without intention.

We are a cultural mixture. Some families are of one race, some of another race.  Some families are Democrats, some Republicans. Some are gay, some are straight. Some go to church, some don’t.  But we don’t seem to pay much attention to those things.

Over the years various neighbors have done favors for me.  They have delivered medicines and groceries.  They checked on me if they thought I was sick.  They have driven me to physical therapy appointments.  They have given me produce from their garden.  The children of one family have made greeting cards for me.  One time, long ago, a very special lady drove my son to the hospital when he broke his arm.  One family has block parties and invites us and other neighbors into her home.  And one neighbor even helped rescue me from an attacking hawk!  I have babysat for them, taken them baked goods, homemade jam, Easter baskets and birthday presents, and prayed for them.  In return I have a safe place to live and the knowledge that I am never alone.

I think I know what Robert Frost was getting at when he wrote in “Mending Wall”: “something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that sends the frozen ground swell under it,”¹ for nature tends to tear down barriers,  but people have to be intentional. 

My block is not like the neighbors in Frost’s poem, but is more like Scout Finch’s description in To Kill a Mockingbird:

“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives”²

One day I was at a party at one of these neighbors’ homes, along with a lot of people I didn’t know.  My friend greeted me in a heartwarming way.  She welcomed me and then turned to her guests and announced:

“I have a Beto sign in my yard and she has a Ted Cruz³ sticker on her car…” then she reached over and put her arm around my shoulder and hugged… “And we love each other!”

Be intentional, my friends.

1.Mending Wall by Robert Frost

2.To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

3.Beto and Cruz were opposing candidates for the U.S. Senate from Texas.