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Good neighbors
by Meredith Jordan
Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the new book, Embracing the Mystery:
the Sacred Unfolding in Ordinary People and Everyday Lives.
"People ought to think less about what they should do and more about what they
are. For when people and their ways are good, then their works shine brightly forth."
-- Meister Eckhart
This is a story of something lost and something found, and the snowstorm that precipitated
both events. One February, the state of Maine was hit by a nasty winter storm: seven
or so inches of heavy, wet snow on top of which fell freezing rain, which immediately
froze to ice half an inch thick. We are a people used to digging out of nasty winter
weather and getting on with our lives, but this storm stopped most of us in our tracks.
However, it did not stop a man partially paralyzed in a fall several years before.
At the time of this storm, the man was homeless. He lived alternately at a local
shelter or in his battered truck with his dog.
Despite his own hardships, he gave what he could to others. In the bitter winters
of the Northeast, he used his single possession, a snow blower, to help clear driveways,
sidewalks and parking lots in the neighborhood around the shelter. He did this asking
nothing in return for his generosity. During this particular storm, while the man
was briefly inside a building to get warm, his snow blower was stolen. He was heartbroken
and visibly shaken. This was the something lost. The something found was that a businessman,
reading about the theft in a local newspaper the next day, bought the man a new snow
blower so he could continue his efforts to be a good neighbor.
The story captured our hearts, and lightened the burdens of a harsh, unforgiving
winter. There is a second, far more personal, part to the story of something lost
and something found. That chapter unfolded in my own neighborhood after the same
storm. Before moving to this neighborhood six years ago, I lived at the distant end
of a mile-long, dirt road. Though my neighbors weren't close enough to see, whenever
bad weather blew through, we showed up to help each other get plowed or shoveled
out. I simply assumed this was what neighbors do for one another. Then I moved into
town, and into a small community of people I hoped I would soon come to know.
Without once looking up
Here, I discovered a phenomenon that shocked me. When storms hit this neighborhood
of 40 houses, 40 men would emerge from their homes with 40 snowblowers. They cleared
their driveways without once looking up to speak with or to help one another. The
first time I saw this happen, I was sure I was mistaken. How could they not even
talk with each other? Why weren't they helping each other to clear the snow? But
the same phenomenon happened with the next storm, and the next. I was baffled to
see this occur with every front that brought us ice or snow. These men did not look
at one another as they worked! They acted like the next house was 50 miles away rather
than 50 yards across the drive.
I was a woman who lived alone and neither owned nor had strength enough to operate
a snow blower. I would stand outside in the cold, storm after storm, and shovel my
way clear. I placed numerous requests for help by the bank of mailboxes at the entrance
to our little neighborhood, believing that the kids who lived nearby would want to
earn a little money by shoveling. There was no response. I never saw children come
out to shovel in the aftermath of a snowstorm. They were sliding down the long hill
past my house the next day, or were outdoors building snowmen, but no one put a shovel
in the hands of a child and said, "Let's go! We have work to do. Let's go see
if any of our neighbors need help."
Witnessing a change
This unfortunately dates me, but I recall rising before school on stormy winter mornings
to help my dad shovel, or to shovel my mother out if my father was away on business.
That was the kind of help families expected from, and gave to, each other. I was
witnessing a change in cultural or family expectations; it caught me unprepared and
surprised as I watched from the sweat and toil of shoveling my own driveway. Forty
men clearing 40 driveways, and not a friendly exchange or a helping hand among them.
Then came a storm that laced everything with a coat of ice so thick we could only
punch our way through to the snow. Trees groaned audibly and eerily under the burden
of the ice. Branches had bent under the weight, too heavy for the trees to hold in
place. Many of them ripped from trunks and fell to the ground in a cacophony of creaking,
popping and cracking before the final collision of ice-coated tree with ice-coated
earth.
The sound of trees crackling, tearing apart, and falling to the hard ground was heart-wrenching.
My house sits on a knoll, and the downhill driveway became a slick glaze of half-inch
thick ice. It was impossible to get in or out of my house without the danger of falling
and sliding straight down the slope into the street. Nor could I walk through the
snow in my front yard. The yard had become a solid downhill stretch of gray, opaque,
threatening ice. Even if I had been able to drive my car over the 10-inch high ridge
of solid snow-ice left at the bottom of the drive by the city plow, I could not have
driven the car up the hill. There was no traction.
I was frozen in place for days. There was no warming trend in the forecast, and all
the stores had been emptied of sand and salt supplies. Still, I had to go to work.
Each day I labored down the icy slope to my car in the road. Every footfall was treacherous.
At night, I laboriously climbed back up the slippery hill, my hands groping for whatever
small holds they could locate in the ice pack, until I reached the door and fell
into my house, breathless and exhausted. At times, a neighbor would walk by as I
struggled to get up or down the driveway and call out: Tough driveway, huh? No one
offered to help.
The storm came through on a Tuesday, and by Sunday, I was out of food. I had to make
a run to the grocery store. It took me four difficult trips up and down the drive
to get the bags of food into the house. Once more, neighbors out walking passed me
and laughed at my efforts, though there was nothing funny about the treacherous climb
up the icy hill. Having a hard time? Not one of them offered to carry a bag.
Ask for nothing
That night, I hit bottom in my occasional despair about being a woman who owns, lives
in and manages a home alone. I was angry at the lack of neighborliness in my community
and desolate at the absence of compassion. I'd just read the story of the man who
spent his days clearing his neighbors' driveways, asking for nothing, and wondered
where the good neighbors were in my world. This was my something lost.
At the peak of my despair, my dear friend Ellie called to see if I would join her
for a meeting that evening. I explained that I couldn't make it up and down that
hill one more time that day, especially at night, when it was cold and a new glaze
of ice would have formed, making the daily trek even more treacherous. I'm sure I
cried. I gave up any pretense of courage in the presence of such adversity, and collapsed
into utter desolation.
Within 15 minutes, Ellie and her husband Peter were at the foot of my driveway, chipping
away at the ice, creating a narrow path and enough traction for me to walk to and
from my car. They worked for several hours in the bitter cold, to create a six-inch-wide
path so I could walk from the house to my car and not be afraid of falling with every
step. It was comforting to receive their support and help: my moment of something
found.
The next morning, I woke to a fresh blanket of clean white snow covering the ice:
The goopy, wet snow that your feet can sink into for a good grip. I was dressed and
down on the street, cleaning my car of the snow at the same time one of my neighbors
was cleaning his. As I shoveled and swept snow, I pondered what it means to be a
"good neighbor" and what we lose if we neglect to be one. For a few minutes,
I generously nursed my resentments, but then I remembered who I am and what I teach
to other people. What if I stopped blaming others for not being good neighbors and
put the same amount of energy into being a good neighbor myself?
In that moment of epiphany, I released my frustration and decided not to wait for
my neighbors to figure out how to help each other. We could learn together. I walked
over one driveway and offered to help Don clear his car. Then and there, I proposed
a barter: if he would use his snowblower to clear the end of my drive after the city
plow came through, I would help him plan and plant his gardens in the spring. He
was delighted, and I no longer felt like a victim of isolation. Another something
found.
Care for them
Spring came. As promised, I divided my iris and lilies, and showed Don how to plant
and care for them. I dug up a rose bush that hadn't favored the spot where I had
planted it, and the two of us placed it in the sun by his deck, where we have both
enjoyed watching it bloom profusely each summer since the treacherous storm. The
seasons changed, and, slowly, we have grown adept at becoming good neighbors.
One morning last winter, I woke up and wandered downstairs to see Don teaching his
daughter how to sled on the little hill between our two houses, just the right size
to be exciting for a little girl only 3 years old. She was covered in powdery snow,
head to foot, giggling as children do when they are having fun with their daddies,
flying down a hill on a new red sled. I sat in the window -- a cup of sweet, hot
tea in my hands -- and watched the two of them fly over the hill, walk back up, and
fly down another time. Lauren stood on her unsteady little legs, then fell and rolled
around in the snow, before she made a next try to reach the top of the hill.
Months later, in another season, I watched from the same window as her baby brother
took his first tentative steps on that same slope of lawn between our houses. Lucas
teetered and fell onto the fresh spring grass, rolled down the slope like his sister,
and came up giggling. These children delight me as they play. Sometimes, they delight
me with fat tomatoes freshly plucked from their garden. Other times, Lauren tickles
me by standing under my living room window and calling for me to come and "vivit"
with her. She draws me away from my work and tricks me into attending to the things
that are truly important: listening to a child, laughing over her stories and antics,
or stopping absolutely everything to enjoy a bowl of ice cream with her.
I found I do have neighbors, after all, but it took me making an effort to become
a good neighbor before I found what I was looking for. It's an art, neighborliness.
Now that I have it, it's not one I ever want to lose. But more than that, this was
a lesson to me. I could have, as I've done on other occasions, sat alone in my despair
and waited for something good to come my way. I believe we live in a basically good
world, with people whose hearts are fundamentally kind. Over time, when a need is
apparent, someone generally steps to the plate. In waiting for someone to recognize
and respond to my need, I was taking the wrong avenue of approach.
When I finally chased away my despair and acted as if we were already good neighbors,
I found a good neighbor living right beside me. I learned I had to change my attitude
before others changed their actions toward me. I had to reach out in order for someone
else to reach back, to free my heart from resentment before something else could
enter. I had to make the first move.
As Gandhi once said: "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."
And so it is. If I hold out my hand to steady you, there's a good chance you will
hold yours out to me. As we grope our way along the slippery slope of life -- realizing
that any one of us could fall through the cracks at any time -- one hand reaching
to hold and support ours makes all the difference.
Meredith Jordan is a psychotherapist and spiritual director in Southern Coastal
Maine, where she works with adults and children who want to develop a meaningful,
authentic relationship with the Mystery many people call God. She is the author of
Embracing the Mystery: the Sacred Unfolding in Ordinary People and Everyday Lives,
published in June 2004, which is available at www.amazon.com and by order through
all independent and large bookstores.. She can be reached at meredith@rogersmckay.org or (207) 283-0752.
Copyright © 2005 Meredith Jordan. All rights reserved. |
| July 2005 |
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