31 days of thanks (10)

Monday Nov 10th:
Today I am thankful for neighbors.

It doesn't matter where I live or have lived, I always try to have a good relationship with my neighbors. Even as a kid, I was friends with everyone on the street young and old. Many of life's lessons came from my neighbors. As I grew older I became more aware of the reciprocating part of being a good neighbor and I gave away eggs just as I borrowed them. I left plates of cookies and bread just as I recieved them. I feel like in today's society no one knows their neighbors, but it's important to at least say "hi" you know?

A few days after our wedding, we watched in hopeless sadness as our neighbor's home across the street caught fire. We watched the firemen do their thing, busting out windows and drenching the home in water. We watched our neighbor cry on the steps of someone else's intact home and at least I know that I felt awful, because this particular neighbor I do not know. I can't even say I've waved hello. We barely see the people that occupy this home, but we hear them constantly and I can only imagine that this fire added even more crap to a full pot of an already bad situation. For days I felt awful. Should I make some lasagna? Leave a note? Offer to help if they need anything? On my part I did nothing except pray that they found the help they needed and made light of their situation. I didn't do anything because I didn't know them, rarely see them and felt stupid to intrude into their lives with my happy dispostion. It's a horrible excuse of neighborly " and this time I failed as a good neighbor.

Tonight though, I was blessed with neigborly love from my grandparents neighbors whom I've never met. All day long my grandparents talked about having steak for dinner. Their fridge/freezer broke sometime last night and we woke up to a sopping wet floor and thawed food so we took some stuff to my aunt's and decided steak was just to precious to throw out, BUT around 4pm my grandpa decided he wanted a BLT, my grandma seconded the proposal and I accepted the change thinking it would be easier than steak anyway.

I got out the incredibly heavy flat grill for the bacon, I washed and cut the lettuce, sliced tomatoes and avocado, and cut open a melon. I toasted the bread, and only then did I find that there was no mayo or dressing to be found!!! I thought, no biggie butter's just fine... Apparently, my grandparents are the one's who wished they had a gun this time because they sat arms folded and said indignately "we can't eat BLT's without mayo!" What? OK...

I tried reasoning that butter was delicious and it's the bacon that makes the sandwich great (even though secretly I was jonesing for some mayo too) It didn't work and they sulked off into their respective rooms leaving me standing in the middle of the kitchen with everything but the mayo. It only took a moment for me to grab a bowl and bolt outside and across the street to T and D's home.

I've never met these wonderful people but tonight they saved my sanity. After some handshakes, small talk about the "nice things we've heard about eachother" and apologies for not introducing ourselves earlier, I was once again standing in our kitchen only this time I had a gelatinous bowl of mayo and a huge grin. My gramps smiled, even though I'm pretty sure he had no idea what just happened and my grandma chastised me for "doing such a thing". I'm pretty happy with my manuever and pretty thankful that these kind folks let me in and gave me mayo "saving the night". In the end gramps got his BLT, grams swayed to peanut butter toast and I enjoyed a NICE BIG GLASS of wine with my BLT salad and as I drift off to sleep tonight with my little sweet-breathed snuggle bum snuggled close I'll quietly thank all my neighbors for all the help and love and appreciation they've given me over the years and with luck I'll be able to keep on reciprocating.