On a morning not long ago, I stood at the bus stop with Michael while we waited for his school bus to arrive.
One of the other boys at the stop asked me if I noticed what was new.
“Uh, let’s see… your jacket, and your socks!”
“That’s right! Aren’t they awesome?” He yanked off a shoe to give me the full awesome experience. He went on to say that he’d gotten them at the Nike plant. His older brother chimed in that their dad works there and so they get a great discount.
“That is a great deal,” I said, marveling.
Soon we were joined by another neighbor and her daughters, then another. Across the street, another neighbor stood on the corner carefully raking bright magenta and orange leaves from a planter and on to the sidewalk. I called across the street to jokingly ask whether he’d rake my leaves too.
“Well, there’s a waiting list,” he called back.
I laughed.
Even as recently as last spring, we did not really know any of these people. Though they have been our neighbors for the last eight years, we had not met a single one of them.
That changed this summer, because of my wife’s open heart surgery.
Ever since we moved here in 2003, the only people on our street that we knew on a first-name basis lived across the street from us. We had a nodding acquaintance with neighbors next door, and might even spare a wave to the others, but that was the extent of our relationship. Pitiful.
All these years, we lived pretty much alone, though we were right in the midst of so many other lives.
And then, we started walking.
Walking was absolutely necessary for my wife’s recovery. The doctor told her she needed to keep moving and get strong, and walking was the best way.
It was slow going at first: we’d shuffle up the street and slowly amble around one cul-de-sac. On the sidewalks, the kids riding their bikes or doing chalk drawings or tossing a basketball through a hoop and the parents chatting amongst themselves would watch us pass by, but would say nothing.
Every day we walked. My wife would walk faster and faster, and we’d travel farther and farther. Some times, we’d hear a comment come back: “You’re moving faster! Good work!”
On one pass, a curious neighbor (the leaf-raker at the start of the story) finally asked what the deal was: why did we walk by every night? We engaged in conversation, learned each other’s names and discovered that he was retired from teaching at a local university.
We soon met another neighbor, then another, and another… they all started to count on seeing us walking past every evening.
We discovered that Michael’s friend “J” lived on one of the cul-de-sacs on our route, which led to conversations with his parents and eventually led to Michael and J learning to ride their bikes as well as forming a great friendship.
Our presence, our connection to the neighbors near Michael’s bus stop made it easy for Michael to fit in to the group of kids who regularly ride the bus to school, and made riding the bus something to look forward to every morning.
This led to bringing those kids down to our street on Halloween night, now that they knew who Michael is and had expectations of seeing a really spooky place down a road they had ignored for all these years.
Which leads us to where we are now, fully engaged in friendly connections with the neighbors, something I hadn’t ever expected in this area, and something I hadn’t really enjoyed for probably 40 years, when I was growing up on that little street in Carmichael, where we were all so close.
I’m really looking forward to next Summer, when we can all be outside again, forging deeper connections.
