It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

We have never been very good neighbors. In our first house, we made a half-hearted attempt to say hi when coming and going. In our second house, the rest of the neighbors were already very good friends with each other, and we were both working like crazy and were rarely home. Our third (and current) home is in the country. The perfect place for people like us, the neighborly-inept.


A few days after we moved in, our "neighbors" down the road a mile brought us some amazing chocolate and peanut butter bars. These are our kind of neighbors! Great cooks, welcoming, and down the road a ways.

Let me pause here to reiterate that it is not that we don't WANT to be good neighbors. We are not cold-hearted, and we really do like to be invested in other people's lives. In fact, when we had new neighbors move in next door at our old house, I even baked them a pie - from scratch! We took it over, introduced ourselves, and welcomed them to town. They looked at us like we had twelve heads.

So, back to the story....a few days after the chocolate and peanut butter neighbors came by, the neighbor across the road came over. This would be the neighbor whose dogs clawed my front windows the very first time I browned hamburger on the stove. Instead of bearing gifts of delicious food, she drove into our driveway and laid on the horn until one of us emerged from the house. I, of course, sent my husband. Turns out, she did not want to welcome us, she needed help with her propane tank.

Last year that neighbor moved away. The house sat empty for quite some time, and then a new family moved in a few weeks ago. This new family is Mennonite - the black cap, girls in dresses, boys in jeans kind of Mennonite. This is not a problem for us at all. In fact, it's great. They are incredibly nice. That, and no loud parties, no wondering what kind of influence the kids will be on my kids, no laying on the horn in the driveway.

However, this has caused a few moments of questioning for me. Issue #1 - what do you take to welcome this family to the neighborhood? A pie was out of the question. These people practically invented pie-making. Fresh produce from the garden? Rats, it was too late in the summer. Wine and cheese? Eh, probably not.

We settled on good old fashioned cookies. We made a batch, called them up, and traipsed across the road to say hi. They invited us in, we chatted for awhile, and both of us said how each other's boys (their youngest two are 10 and 7) were welcome to come over and play.

It has been great for my kids to have friends to do stuff with. But here-in lies issues #2, 3, 4....and so on. I have to wonder, what on earth do these neighbor boys think about their friends who (gasp) wear shorts? And worse then that, what about their friends' mom who does too?

I'm also wondering when my 4 year old is going to shout, "Hey, look at me! I'm shakin' my bootie!" Or when my boys are going to ask them to play guns or sword fighting, or ask them to come in and watch Scooby Doo (can they do that?). All this play time is leaving me with a heap of worry of how my kids might offend them.

Thankfully, so far, so good. The boys have kept things on common ground - baseball, swinging, bike riding, and the neighbor boys even introduced my kids to a ripstik, which, and I quote, "Is all the rage at our school right now. Everybody has one."

My kids are having a great time. Me? I'll be in my closet over-analyzing every piece of clothing I own to see if it's appropriate for walking out on my front porch.