Friends and Neighborhood

Tonight D and went out to dinner with two other couples from our neighborhood and had a wonderful time.  We've done this a couple of times now; the six of us go out, chat, eat dinner, have a beer or glass of wine, and go home again.  We're all of a certain age with grown children, and we've all lived on the same street for 30+ years.

As we came home tonight, I thought about how lucky we are to have stumbled upon the house in which we wound up raising our daughter.  We'd been looking for a while, and I was ready to settle for something less than either of us wanted when we happened upon the house we're still in.  And at the time, that was all that mattered - the house and the school district.  Little did I know, I'd found a neighborhood and life-long friends.

D grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone else.  I grew up moving from town to town and from state to state.  Listening to others, I knew I missed something, but I didn't really know what it was. Now I know.

Our children still talk about being able to be out all day playing with their friends from the neighborhood, and every parent looked out for every child. There were neighborhood activities: sports, cookie exchanges, bridge games, garage sales, picnics, neighborhood work groups, and the yearly visit from Santa. 

Now that we are older and the neighborhood has morphed into something still wonderful but different; now that our children have grown up and moved on, now that many original neighbors have moved out and new ones have come in, and now that younger children are once again riding their bikes up and down our driveway (the only "hill" in the neighborhood), we look back and realize how lucky we were.  

We look to our neighborhood as it is now and rejoice that the magic is still here.