The Neighborhood I Had Hoped For?!

This past week has been a whirl wind. Hurricane Isaac decided to completely change it's path and make it's debut to America by sitting on Louisiana for a couple of days. This was my first hurricane experience apart from my parents and in my own house. I'm very thankful to report that my house sustained no damage nor flooding. This was a great learning experience for my husband and I if we ever experience another hurricane and decide not to evacuate again.

I'd like to focus this blog on my neighbors. I've blogged about neighbors before Here. I'm sad to report that I hadn't really focused on getting to know my neighbors like I intended - see failed New Year's Resolutions Here. But....

As we began to board up our windows of our house - we decided to take no chances since there are plenty of trees around our neighborhood - we had a little chat with our neighbor about their experiences with hurricanes. It definitely calmed me down a bit of what to expect in our neighborhood. During the conversation, he had mentioned that they had a generator and wouldn't mind throwing an extension cord over the fence so we could plug in our refrigerator. Isn't that awesome?! How nice of them, since we had no generator or any way of saving our food if we were out of power for some time. Apparently, a neighbor at one time did a similar deed and they wanted to pay it forward. It was only a matter of time before we were out of power. After some time of no power and starting to worry about loosing some food, we decided to take up our neighbor's offer about borrowing some power. Once the weather died down a bit we exchanged some gas for some power. The funny thing is that after finally setting up our refrigerator not an hour later and we had received power again. In fact, we had to inform our neighbors that the generator was not needed anymore. Thank you, Rick, for this is the neighborhood I had hoped for...

After Isaac definitely out weighted it's welcome, it was time to start the clean up process. You know, rake up leaves that came from every tree in sight and clean up yards of tree branches and other debris. My husband and I have had very small conversations with our neighbor from our front doors in passing before, but this was the day when we were dirty, stinky, and sweaty when we finally introduced ourselves! How's that for first appearances?! We had a small convo and exchanged "if we can help at any time, let us know." Thank you Brittany, for this is the neighborhood I had hoped for....

As my husband and I began to take down our boards, a young man that lives next door didn't think twice to help my husband with the heavy wood. Thank you Nick, for this is the neighborhood I had hope for...

While my husband and I began dragging broken tree limbs from our back yard to our front, I noticed the same young man that helped us, help another neighbor. He was also dragging tree limbs to the front yard. Once we were finished with our yard, I thought, why not see if they need more help? I'm already dirty, stinky, and sweaty. We walked over and picked up rakes and didn't skip a beat. The owner of the house appeared with ice cold water and we introduced ourselves. She was a young woman who had surgery for skin cancer the day before Isaac made landfall and wasn't supposed to do any physical work. She had a huge tree in her back yard and the storm cause many limbs and leaves to cover her back yard. With five people helping, we had the back yard cleared in no time. We finished right before the sun went down and the mosquitoes could come out of their hiding. She was so thankful, and I was happy to discover that we had a lot in common. Thank you Debbie, for this is the neighborhood I had hoped for....

It may have taken a hurricane, but I was able to discover that this is the neighborhood I had hoped for, a community, helping each other out in times of need.

Peace, love, and community
-Miche

And for your viewing pleasure, this was part of Day 2 of hurricane Isaac at our house:

Learning to Live with Neighbors

I can't believe it's been 6 months since we have purchased and moved into our home, and it's been a great experience so far.

One thing I'm learning about is how to live with neighbors. So far, it's very different from what I experienced growing up in my small bayou town. Growing up, my family knew our neighbors very well. It was nothing for my mom to send me to a neighbor's house to ask for an egg, since she was in the middle of cooking and ran out. Trick-or-treating was special since we would receive a special bag prepackaged with our names on it, and we also knew two houses down there would be hot dogs and popcorn balls year after year. We visited one another. If you were outside doing yard work, there was a good chance a neighbor would come by. My mom bought our birthday cakes from a lady a few houses down. My dad knew who he could borrow tools from. In fact, my dad helped an older gentleman grow a garden two houses down. They enjoyed spending time together and sharing the crop. There was a real sense of community and support in the neighborhood.

What have I experienced so far living in my new neighborhood? Well, definitely not the above. In the front of our house is a pecan tree. To my little knowledge, I didn't realize how much a pecan tree looses it's leaves in the winter - enough to fill up 1 1/2 large trash cans with JUST leaves in case you were wondering (and this was just the first raking). One particular morning, I decided it was definitely time to rake since no trace of grass could be seen. While raking, I stumbled upon some unwanted surprises that I know suspect came from two small black dogs from our neighbor's house. Immediately inside I felt emotions of rage and revenge. Why can't they pick up after their dog? That's so rude! Are they lazy? Why can't they train their dog to stay on THEIR property. I just want to get a dog (which we don't have) and train it to go in their yard. Ha! That will show them. After about 30 min of ranting in my head while raking, I calmed down and thought is that showing love? Is that how I can get to know my neighbors and form a sense of community? Definitely not. Then I began to look around at my surroundings and felt horrible to see many yards that had OUR leaves in them. Yikes! Some of my neighbor's don't even have a tree in their yard. Now, I know I can't totally prevent the wind from blowing the leaves around, but I could rake up my yard more often, than...twice? I'm sure if I rake more often, then it wouldn't give the wind a chance to blow the leaves in my neighbor's yards. Will this one act make my neighbors become friends with me? I definitely don't think so, but I'm sure they would appreciate it.

Currently, I only know one set of neighbors thus far. This particular set was very close to the family that lived in our house before us, and they introduced themselves to us quickly because they were collecting the mail for the family that moved. They seem like really nice people, and I look forward in getting to know them better. Sadly, I don't know the other people that live in the houses that surround me.

One of my New Year's resolutions this year will be to change that. I want to feel the sense of community and support that I had growing up. I know it will not happen over night, and it will take time. I don't think this is an easy task. I can think of many excuses as why not to - Will they like us? There is too big of an age difference. What should I talk about? etc. My prayer for 2012 is that God would give me opportunities to get to know my neighbors, and that I am brave and bold enough to seize those opportunities.

I'm learning to live with neighbors, how about you?
-Miche