Are good neighbors hard to come by?
Is it luck or the norm?
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I recently went to the neighborhood block party. I was on the fence about going but reading Why You Should Throw a Block Party by
tipped me over the edge and I decided to go for it. Plus, it seemed like the type of thing you do when you live in a neighborhood made up of a lot of people, most of whom you don’t know.I wouldn’t know because I grew up on a street with a cul-de-sac, one that wasn’t part of any formal neighborhood. There were no organized block parties to meet each other, per se, because we all knew each other well enough to knock on each other's door, the very fact that we were neighbors enough to be a community by default.
I loved every minute of it.
As the oldest of four, I considered it my neighborly duty to know every single person on the street and their business. I spent my childhood in and out of their houses, baking bread (literally), chit chatting, and eagerly taking on the role of town cryer (no wonder I went into public-facing roles!).
If someone tried to steal a bike from someone’s carport, I made sure everyone knew who to look for. When the police chased someone who made a wrong turn up our street and made a break for it in our yard, I made sure everyone knew it was a one-time thing and we’d be fine, information I’d gleaned from listening at my bedroom window while the officer talked to the kid’s mother in my front yard.
And when it snowed that one time (in Florida!), our neighbors with the only fireplace brought us into their home. When I made the high school newspaper staff freshmen year, another scored me an interview with Ken Block of Sister Hazel, a huge deal that put me on the map and that I still get giddy thinking about to this day, especially because I got a special exemption from being grounded to talk to him (and to think I’ve been writing since I was 14 and still don’t consider myself a writer…..). Neither of these things happened by chance, but because I was so entrenched in the street’s goings-on that they knew my hopes and goals and hobbies.
The thing about being a kid is that you think the world revolves around you and that you know everything because the adults let you think that, but as an adult, I realize how little I knew about their personal lives. Even so, I felt very strongly in those pre-Internet days that I was part of the glue that kept us all together and it made me feel connected and important (eldest daughter, elder millennial syndrome, anyone?).
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When I moved back in my early 20’s for a bit, I slid back into the ease that comes with going home. This time, the conversations were different. I was older and my dad was deployed oversees, so we talked about those grown-up things I never gave much thought to as a kid. Our driveway chats now included smoking together, me waiting for my friends to pick me up for a night out as my neighbor got ready for bed, oftentimes awake and outside again when I came home in the early morning hours, something my Smoke-Free Class of 2000 pledge-taking self would never have seen coming (even now, admitting that I broke that pledge gives me a tinge of anxiety).
By the time I was in my mid-30’s, most of them had moved on, whether to a retirement home or to the afterlife, the end of an era for my childhood. But even so, I would walk the street and knock on the doors of those still there to say hello, share that I was getting married or having a baby, still delighting in their delight about what the little girl from up the street was up to. It was only a few years ago that the last of them passed, and even still, I knocked on that door to meet the son, easily in his 60’s or 70’s, who had moved in to share my fond memories of his dad.
I write all this as if I think about it often, but it’s only recently that I started to think about how lucky I was to grow up on such a street. How rare it is to have that kind of built-in community, and that my parents were there long enough for me to enjoy it well into my 30’s.
And that luck has followed me into adulthood. Now, I have neighbors who, as a mother, I am so grateful for, who remind me a lot of the ones I adored growing up. They are warm and welcoming and I get to see how they delight in my son, and how he, even at the age of 4 (and younger than I was when I moved to that cul-de-sac), asks to do the “neighbors loop”, his own early version of the town cryer.
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It wasn’t always this way.
Before I got divorced, my interactions with my neighbors consisted of polite waves and a brief conversation about the weather, my desire to know my neighbors not a shared one in my relationship, and so it wasn’t until I was on my own that I got to know them, and even then it was my son who got us going by inviting himself into someone’s home and asking for both a snack and to take home one of their plants (they said yes!).
I try to give myself some grace for those “lost years”, though. We moved in 2020, a tough year for everyone but one in which I was also contending with postpartum depression and a public-facing job in politics, my desire to people pretty low. My son was also too young to walk or talk, never mind play soccer in their driveway or roll down their grassy hills at warp speed or ask to take their plants.
But now he’s doted on in a way that brings me that immense joy that comes with seeing trusted adults express genuine interest in your child when he tells them what’s happening at school and where we went and what we did in extreme detail, never making him feel unheard or dismissed.
And by doting on him, they are doting on me, offering a little mental reprieve, not only in the moment but in knowing that if I need an ointment at 9 pm, they will run it over (and have), or if I need to go to the emergency room, they will take him into their home, this knowledge providing me a deep sense of comfort that my own mother may have felt all those years ago.
So while he’s too young to cross the street by himself right now, it’s not hard to imagine him knocking on their doors on his own some day, coming home from college or wherever he is to check in on them, or introducing a partner or a child (if he so chooses) to the community he loves. And when I think about moving, because I have, I remember all of this and wonder if I’d be able to recreate that, or if in today’s disconnected world of ever-increasing vitriol, we’re just plain lucky.
Let’s discuss!
What was your neighborhood like growing up? How does it compare to where you live now?
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I love this reflection on neighborhoods and neighbors. Having moved a lot in the past 8 years (military family), I’ve experienced both really wonderful neighbors that I trusted with my children and neighbors I barely saw, never knew.
I hated the town we lived in before moving to CO (where we are now and where our neighbors are amazing) — but we lived on base and the loop we lived on was a tight knit little unit. Those women were my lifeline for 3 awful years in an otherwise shitty, isolated, inhospitable town. It was the only thing I was sad to leave.
In my experience it’s rare to have a really close-knit street/neighborhood. I never had it growing up and I’ve lived in a LOT of places. At 38, this is the first time I’ve experienced a neighborhood community, and I’m very grateful for it. It’s so valuable and it’s nice to know that you have other people around looking out for you and your home.