I came across a video today that brought me to tears. A man kept getting motion alerts from his driveway security camera each evening because a little boy kept riding his bike in his driveway. In response, the man chalked a racetrack in the driveway for the child to have some fun as he rode, and after each rain, he would chalk another more challenging and creative course. In a short time, the entire neighborhood was enjoying the fun.
Our family has enjoyed a similar neighborhood kindness. For the entire time we’ve lived in our neighborhood, our next door neighbors have been truly wonderful. They have three children who are significantly older than my kids, the oldest of whom just started college. Their backyard is much bigger than our tiny backyard, and has always been much more fun, with a clubhouse, a swingset, a trampoline and an above-ground pool.
Over the past couple of summers, though, their kids have moved on from the backyard fun as they became busy with friends, sports and summer jobs. One by one, the pool and the clubhouse began to be taken down. A couple of years ago they moved the swingset into our yard, which has been used nearly daily by our daughters. But this summer they did something truly generous: after tearing down everything else in their yard, they kept their trampoline assembled and in their yard.
Our yard could never fit a trampoline, as it’s far too small. But they kept the trampoline up for my children to use, because they understood what it’s like to have three small rambunctious kids inside the house; because they didn’t draw a line between our properties, because they care for us. There have been times when we’ve come outside to find our lawn had been mowed by one of our neighbors. We’ve been the beneficiaries of gardens we haven’t grown and meals we haven’t made over the years, all because of our pure luck at moving next door to kind people.
When we can, we try to repay some of the kindness, mowing a yard or lending a tool when we can. But, in truth, we’ve mostly just been blessed by getting to live next door to great neighbors, with the only thing we’ve been able to offer in return is gratitude and smiles.
Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.
The thing is, all of those kindnesses have been shown over the years, even though four years ago, our front yard had a political sign that was directly in opposition of the sign in the yard next door. There’s a pervasive message in our world that tells us to align with our tribe, shouting, “If you’re not for us, you’re against us!”
There’s something really moving about people showing up for each other as neighbors, not because they expect anything in return, not because they are close friends, not because they are in agreement on all things, but because they feel a personal burden of care for the people in their reach.
What would happen to our culture if we spent more time finding ways to delight and care for those around us than we did correcting them? What would happen if we didn’t allow the lines that are supposed to divide us to do so? What would happen if we didn’t believe there was such a thing as other people’s children, but instead went out of our way to make our own neighborhoods joyful places for everyone? What if there was less time spent on things that benefitted ourselves and more on things that would benefit someone else?
Maybe then we would all discover the same joy that a three-year-old boy finds when discovering a surprise racetrack or that my children have spent as they find themselves weightless, propelled into the air as they jump once again on the neighbor’s trampoline.
