It was the kind of evening I love.
– Miraculously, R-boy’s baseball practice and chess club were both at the same place, just down the street. (Translation: I dropped him off and headed back home!)
– Two little girls – neither of them mine – played and orbited around me while I worked on springing the garage (digging out the spring stuff).
– I got reacquainted with the outside of R-house, and saw way more happy perennials than I expected.
– Janet stopped in the alley to chat. Janet is my neighbor who just lost her sweet mom, Betsy (who was also my neighbor), and Janet’s an accountant and it’s April, so needless to say she is wiped out. We talked about loss, and grief, and shock, and AHBL, and narcissism, and injustice, and exhaustion, and dating, and death, and divorce, and the possibility of hope. I felt strength from her, maybe she felt it back.
It was a neighborhood night. And I (heart) my neighborhood.
Which reminded me of something I saw in GOOD magazine this month.
GOOD has launched a campaign to make April 25 a new official holiday: Neighbor Day. Ok, I’m game. I just marked my calendar and I’ll be squeezing in something neighborly that day, even if it’s just to walk Summit the neighbor dog, or borrow some sugar. Oh wait, I don’t eat sugar. OK, I’ll think of something that can bring me face to face with a real, live neighbor this Sunday.
You in?
by julie rybarczyk
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Neighbor photo/image by GOOD.
by julie rybarczyk | shorts and longs | the both and
