Love Your Neighbors

Amelia and Bailey

Growing up on Barkley Ave., I lived in the same house for nineteen years and honestly, I would not be able to tell you the name of the man that lived next door. I played with the neighborhood kids from time to time, but they were mostly boys and I often found myself cleaning their room before I would allow myself to play in it. Boys are messy, you know. We were friendly with everyone, but we weren't about to close off the street for any 4th of July block party or anything, either. We did our own thing. We didn't exchange Christmas gifts. Or bring over a plate of cookies for new neighbors. Or watch out for one another. There was just a general lack of community. And it always made me a little bit sad.

I knew plenty of people in California who had block parties and great neighbors, so this is not a slam on any particular region. I, personally, just had to move to a small town in Alabama to find the kind of neighborhood I always dreamed about. The kind of neighborhood where the kids across the street spend hours at our house on a Saturday and then invite us for dinner that night. The kind of neighborhood where Meemaw and Granddaddy Ang take Amelia for rides in the wheelbarrow and bring us handmade deer sausage every Christmas. The kind of neighborhood where we take vacations to Disneyworld together in the summer and pick up eachother's kids from school because the baby is still napping. The kind of neighborhood where we take care of eachother's pets when we're away and can stop by to say "hello" without calling first.

Our neighborhood, in so many ways, has been a salve to that broken piece of me. Here, I have found the community I always longed for. I think that is why, despite the laundry list of Southern idiosynchrasies we could do without, for now, we love living in Eufaula. It is home.