Neighbours

I grew up on a farm in the country so neighbours were scarce or cows. As an adult, I was an apartment dweller in downtown Toronto, something that does not lead you to be very neighbourly with the other people crammed into the same building with you. And then we moved to Halifax!

We've lived on the same street now for more then 10 years. In fact, we liked the street so much that when it was time to move into a bigger house, we bought from our neighbours and only moved 2 houses over. Our street even still has some of it's original occupants, people who have lived there for more then 50 years. We are not close friends with any of them, but it's nice to have that "over the fence" relationship with people.

And it's great to know that in times of crisis you have someone close by to turn to. I had just such a mini-crisis on Friday.

Liam wanted to ride his bike to school, so we got him all set and off we went. Not more then a couple of minutes from the house he stopped and I realized that his chain had come off. I tried to pop it back on, but, really, I am not mechanically inclined when it comes to stuff like this. And I was getting covered in gross smelly grease! As luck would have it, Liam's teenage babysitter was just coming out of her house. I shouted out to her to see if her Grandpa was home. He was!! Georgie came over and I asked him to help me put the chain back on. He took one look at Liam's bike and gave me a whole list of things that need to be done - no air in the tires, the chain needed to be tightened, stuff was rusty. Then he scooped up the bike, took it to his garage, shouting over his shoulder that he would get it all fixed up! Not only did he fix it up - it sparkled as if it were new - he even brought it back to the house for me.

Having great neighbours is wonderful, especially when you don't have any family locally that you can turn to.

This also made for a great teaching moment for Liam, something that I hope will help him to be a great neighbour one day. We baked Georgie a cinnamon loaf and Liam wrote him a thank you card and delivered the 2 of them after school.