Like a Good Neighbor

In the first house I ever lived in, we knew one neighbor: the lady next door. And the only reason we knew her was because she used to babysit my brother when my mom worked. In the second house I ever lived in, we knew two neighbors: the family next door to us and a kid from school a few doors down. But we didn’t interact with them much.

In our house now, we know the names of at least six of our neighbors and are quite close with three in particular. I would love to know more, but this is already many more than I knew growing up. Although social media has come a long way in the last 30 years, that is not the reason for how we know our neighbors. We’ve actually seen and interacted with them at least once in person.

Our neighbors have been a key part to the success of our house remodeling and home maintenance. They’ve loaned us tools, come over in the evening hours to help us unclog drains, come over (almost) first thing in the morning to help stop leaky toilets, and give us encouragement and advice. We’ve messaged each other regarding unclosed garage scares (or realities) and been invited to each other’s birthday parties and social gatherings. I wish I could say we've done more to help our neighbors, but we're the amateurs around here compared to our much older and wiser neighbors.

That’s one thing I appreciate and am thankful for in this day and age, being able to say I know my neighbors by name and consider them friends. Also, my daughter is a fan of all of their dogs, and her first true word she could say clearly, with the exception of mama and dada, was gou gou, which is dog in Chinese. She’s so good at saying it that she can identify and say it even before we spot where the dog actually is (picture or real life).

On this particular afternoon, I was pushing her outside in her baby swing and saw a neighbor out in his yard whom we haven’t seen in a few years. Just the other day we had gone out for a walk and my husband and I said to each other, “You know, we haven’t seen H in a while.” So I made a point to walk over, say hi and introduce him to my daughter.

We talked for probably close to 20 minutes, long enough for me to wonder what time it was and begin slightly panicking that my first student was about to show up any minute. He told me about his flowers, which nursery he went to to purchase plants, and the Japanese maple that he was going to have to have removed because it was nearing its lifespan of 30 years and not doing well. I told him about working from home teaching piano and he shared with me about his hobby making pens. Gorgeous pens with abalone, wood, clock parts, basically anything you could think of. I then asked him if he made pens out of bullet shells. He acted surprised at first that one could make a pen out of a bullet shell and then proceeded to pull one out of his pocket saying, “This one is yours.”

I couldn’t believe he just pulled one out of his pocket just like that and then proceeded to give it to me so freely. Of course my daughter grabbed at it and had a good look.

We had quite the struggle buying our first house. We lost many we thought were “the one”. And when we finally got this one, I really thought we’d made a huge mistake for a long time. But our neighbors have made all the difference.