today i got a terrific email from neighbors we had in kirksville, who themselves had moved down to texas about a year before we headed here. i had sent them a christmas card, and they had sent us one, but they emailed anyway just to say hi and to say they were glad they had our contact information now.
we never went out on the town with these neigbors, never had them over for dinner, never did them a huge favor that garnered friendship in return. but that didn't matter, it didn't matter that there was no blood relationship or other compelling reason to care about how the other was doing, or to lend a helping hand now and then, other than, we were neighbors, and that was enough. this is the kind of relationship my mom had with our neighbors when i was a child, and it's the kind of relationship i always thought 'neighbors' should be. talking to each other when you see them out in their yard, trading treats at holidays, giving the other a hand with something just to make it easier.
for the most part, i've been blessed enough to experience these kinds of neighbors, mostly in childhood. in st louis, i remember playing with the older kids in the neighborhood, putting on plays with them, going to the park, and my mom having other families over for dinner. in chatham, the first night we moved in to the house, sitting down to our pizza dinner with half-unpacked boxes all around, a group of neighbors welcomed us with a 'trick or treat!' (it was not holloween), just to greet us to the street. there, i remember fantastic block parties, being invited to play video games with neighbor kids you barely knew, just because you lived on the same street, and how everyone would pitch in to help each other out whenever it was needed. (cypress drive, you rocked!)
when we moved into springfield, that feeling was lost. we did have a few great neighbors you'd invite to things, check on each others' kids (not mine, my mom's), say hello when they saw you, let you borrow their tools, and share holiday treats, but the neighborhood itself wasn't the communal high point i loved from chatham, and even with the occasional hello, the neighborhood felt lonely and disconnected. maybe the experience was different for my mom, but i also had almost no children my own age to play with there.
after 4 years of dorm living, i was REALLY used to saying hello to alot of people as soon as i walked out the door. when we moved into the kirskville house, we had neighbors on three sides you could count on for advice, 'hello's, a friendly chat, extra garden bounties, and for keeping an eye on the house the many times we left town. it still wasn't the same as chatham, but at least we weren't all in our houses, pretending to live on a desert isle with no one else around for miles.
ewa beach has been... very different. we have romeo and his family, who has been kind enough to give us tips on caring for these new tropical plants we've never seen before, let us try some guava from his garden, and lent us a ladder before our stuff arrived. his wife came over once to say hello (of course, i forget her name) and invited us to church with them some time (subsequent questions about going with them have been met with 'yes, it's very hard to find, though') but we've not seen her since. yet as limited as our contact with romeo's family has been, i'm grateful for it, because it's the most neighborly contact we've had here. other neighbors will smile and wave, but there's not that sense of community i long for so much. i've thought about going ahead and making the moves myself, handing out cookies or breads to the houses around us... but i'm stalled by my usual sense of self-doubt and sqeamishness around strangers. we'll be here five years though... that's a long time to feel isolated in your own neighborhood... i better get brave FAST.
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