The importance of good neighbours

 Reading: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
Listening to: "Harvest Moon" by Neil Young
Outside: Sun splashes on the morning's leftover puddles

Hello again, Dedicated Reader, and welcome to my Thursday afternoon blog post. 

My house is empty of children, because they are racing the wind at the seaside, and indulging in pizza and hotdogs and ice creams at Filey, and they fill their grandparents' days, making memories that will last a lifetime. They are making the most of the end of the summer, and I look forward to seeing them all again over the weekend, when I can hear about all the things they were up to since I saw them last.

Lena becomes a unicorn.

So I potter around, missing them, missing me, missing them-as-an-extension-of-me, even missing that frenetic schedule that sometimes wrings you dry - up early, breakfasts, play, lunch, nap, snack, play, dinner, CBeebies toddler shows babbling throughout - and I wander around this silent shell of a house: too quiet, too still, the only evidence of my children being their empty rooms and empty shoes and Lena's faded muddy bare-footprint by the front door. The big unicorn floatie bumps around restlessly in its pool-corral in the back yard, waiting for its friends to return. My house is like a TV on mute.

So I've filled my days with all the things I normally don't. Anything to stay busy. British citizenship application? Yep. Lena's back-to-school preparations? Yep. Front yard refresh? Yep. Roto-Tilling the weeds away without a Roto-Tiller, shoveling clods of earth and roots and dandelions and errant rocks into the ever-growing pile back behind the garage. The smell of soft, fresh dirt as it dries in the sun. The hot work, the muscle-busting work, a kind of work I can understand. And it's hard. It's really, really hard. It's the kind of work where you are about three seconds away from crying because the edging strip won't go down into the soil right, when the pins won't hammer it down right. It's sweaty and repetitive, full of knocks and hammered knuckles and lemon-sized bruises, but you get there in the end - you get there - and it feels good to finally sit down in the grass at the end of the day, every bone aching, watching the evening's shadows stretch along the dirt-beds. Another achievement unlocked.

And here are my good neighbors, offering kind words, a rake, fresh tomatoes for a snack. They come from next door and from across the street, offering encouraging sounds, bringing the tons of slate I've requested, dropping it into a car-sized pile in another neighbor's driveway (to which that neighbor said, "If you can't help your neighbours out, there's something wrong.") And then, sending their kid and his friend over the next day to help with the shovelling, wheel-barrowing, dumping, and flattening out of the slate rocks. I am floored by my neighbors - I am grateful of their hands out, ready to help, hands filled with tomatoes and rakes and shovels and Cokes.

Audrey's home-grown tomatoes

There's plenty of bad in this world. Too much.  There are bad neighbors who can make your life a living hell (believe me, I know.) But I am super, super lucky to have the neighbors I have - they are a testament to the kindness in this world. If you're reading this, guys and gals, thank you!

And it was only a few days ago that I got to show my best friend and her mom around on their first-ever visit to the UK - and, there she was, my favorite neighbor, her kindness stretching back 22 years, when she first stood in my doorway on college move-in day, at Room 509 at Woody Shales dorm and declared, with happy certainty, "I like Polly Pocket."

Haley and me at York Rail Station

Gurl, so do I. 

Ever since then, she has been my keenest listener, my finder of lost things. She observes, relates, jokes. She has been my classmate, dormmate, colleague, therapist. And here we are, more than two decades later, connected by Facebook posts and random Messenger chats chronicling the weird and wonderful things in our lives. We live in different countries, different time zones (she's in Indiana, I'm in Yorkshire), but for a couple priceless days we got to share meals, and walk side-by-side, breathing the same air, and that is a beautiful thing. Love you long time, BFF.

I hope you have a good neighbor, Dedicated Reader. If you don't, go out there and find one. And, of course, by all means - be one.

Happy Thursday, everybody.