"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood,
A Beautiful day for a neighbor,
Would you be one? (words changed--original are 'would you be mine, could you be mine)
Won't you be one?" (words changed)
Amended Lyrics from the Theme Song for Mr. Roger's Neighborhood
Something odd is going on outside my window. Maybe 'odd' isn't the best choice of words, but in many places it would defintely be considered Odd. What I am watching is one man with a snow shovel clearing the sidewalks for two of his neighbors. It seems odd at first, but it's actually pretty normal in this neighborhood. The longer we live here, the more I love my neighbors. I might add, here, that all of the people involved are young, healthy, strong and quite capable of clearing their own sidewalks, but they happen to be at work now, and he is home. I guess he figures, he's home so why not?
From the beginning snow has seemed to bring out an attitude that is somewhere between Pay it Forward and Random Acts of Kindness, and I have often been the recipient. Larry has almost always been away when a snow storm hit. While I cleared my own driveway, my neighbor Mike always walked across the street with his snowblower and cleared my sidewalks. When we had a lot of snow, my neighbor Chuck was out with his Kabota tractor with a front end bucket clearing the snow of anyone who needed it. Originally, I was going to make light of this and call this post "A Boy and His Toys!". Give a man a snowblower or snow plow and a snow day is just as much fun for a man as it is for a kid.
But what I am watching is much more than that. I have lost track of the number of times when a neighbor has provided a helping hand without ever being asked. Just recently, we left for the weekend and missed a package that was delivered after we left. When Kristin saw FED-EX drop the box at our door she had her husband bring it in 'because we were supposed to get a lot of rain that night'.
The school bus stop was recently moved to the common area next to our home. Suddenly I was waking up to see that someone had cleared the sidewalk in front of several homes, including ours. A few weeks ago I saw Laurie shoveling the snow from her home across the common area to ours.
Friend Beth was gone for the weekend and I was helping to look after her dogs. When she asked me who cleared their driveway I told her Mike did the first snow fall, I did the last, and Cindy cleared the steps every time she stopped to feed the dogs.
The point is, I don't have a good neighbor. I have a great neighborhood. Although I am close with several, I'm not acquainted with all of my neighbors. But it is a place where people take turns looking out for one another. At the end of the day we often don't know who helped us out but we do know the people here look out for each other. Mr. Rogers (a lifelong Pittsburgh native and a real local hero) would be proud.
The view out my window may not be odd, but it is special. Random Acts of Kindness are so simple yet they can make such a difference in the life of a person, or a neighborhood. This neighborhood is proof positive of that.
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Growing up, it was common for me to watch my dad shovel the neighbor's walks (they were both elderly). He also mowed their lawns for them. They didn't ask him to do it; he just did it. I loved that about my dad. He was such a selfless man and such a good neighbor. You don't find that in many places today.
ReplyDeleteI'm proud that my brothers learned from my dad and do the same thing. And I'm also proud that my sons also have the 'pay it forward' and 'help a neighbor' mentality. We sure could use a lot more of it in the world.
Here in my neighborhood, one of our neighbors has a snow plow on the front of his truck. He always plows the main road through the subdivision after it snows. I'm so thankful for that.
That's the way life should be. We're lucky to have folks like this around us.
Have a great weekend,
Susan
Do you remember this kind of thing happening when we were growing up in Ambler? I'm not sure I do - but am so glad that you have this experience. And ... as you say ... it's the way it should be! When I was a kid, I do remember us all going up to Grandpa's on Lindenwold Terrace to do his shoveling as he was getting too old to do it. But - I don't remember it between neighbors.
ReplyDeleteThe climate in this country is contentious, and it's very heartening to read this and to know that it's not always as negative as I / we sometimes feel it is. It's the little things such as this that create good feelings and neighborliness that transcend the political contentiousness that seems to be prevalent now.
So often it's in times of difficulty (and I would include lots of snow shoveling as such) that we band together and care for one another.
We do live in a contentious world evidenced by road rage incidents and the "I'll sue every body' attitude that some have. But lots of people have discovered that Pay it Forward and Random Acts of Kindness breed more RAoK's!
ReplyDeleteThere are 3 benefits from this. 1) You feel good about yourself, 2) The other person feels good, 3) Someone else WILL benefit either directly or indirectly, just because YOU started something.