Looking Out for Each Other

"I think Bob's C-PAP machine is on the way!"

It was the voice of my neighbor Phyllis, who lives three doors down on the first corner of our street. "It's a red car with "Medical Services" on the side. And it's turning...it's parking in front of your house. Oh, good! Call me later and let me know how things are going!"

Half an hour later, just before the respiratory therapist from the C-PAP supplier left, we got a call from our next door neighbor Louise.

"Is everyone all right??" she asked. "I came home and saw that Medical Services car in front of your house and got worried. I hope you guys are okay."

I smiled as I hung up after reassuring Louise that all was well  -- once again amazed and delighted at how neighbors here look out for one another.

It reminds me of the caring neighbors in the small town in Kansas where my grandparents lived. Their farm was about half a mile out of town and the nearest neighbor was Mrs. Boone, whose house was down the road. One night, when I was visiting my widowed grandmother during one of my college spring breaks, I stayed up late reading in my upstairs bedroom.  The phone rang and I heard my grandmother answer. A few minutes later, she came up the stairs smiling. "That was Mrs. Boone down the road," she said. "She saw a light on here and was wondering if someone was sick."

Grandma laughed when she saw my shock. "This is small town Kansas," she said. "And we do look out for each other."

A native of Los Angeles, that has not always been a fact of life for me. True, when I was a child growing up in a suburban L.A. neighborhood built quickly after World War II for returning veterans, I enjoyed a friendly and amazingly economically diverse neighborhood. One next door neighbor was a used car salesman, the other a college professor. Our neighbors across the street included a lawyer next to a waitress at Foster's Freeze. And everyone had kids -- and we were in and out of each other's houses constantly. Our parents were all friends. There were neighborhood parties and spats and celebrations. We all knew each other well. I thought it would always be that way.

But when Bob and I bought our first house in Valencia, a lovely planned community north of Los Angeles, we were stunned to find that, most of the time, we barely knew our neighbors. 

There were some exceptions: We were friendly with our next door neighbors Pete and Carol, a gruff older couple, though we never really socialized with them. But we had some nice talks over the backyard fence after these former cat-haters fell in love with our cat Freddie. Pete sometimes called after a hard day at work and asked if we could hand Freddie to him over the fence so he could have a stress-reducing "Freddie Fix." We watched each other's homes during vacation times. And our hearts broke when they died -- he of bladder cancer in 1994, she in a fire that gutted their home eight months later.

We also befriended Dan and Lydie who moved into the house after it was rebuilt. But we didn't see each other that much. Dan and Lydie worked long hours and commuted by train to Los Angeles. Bob and I had horrible commutes and long work hours, too. Like all the others, we would pull into our garage at night, closing the door after us.

Only disasters seemed to bring us all out into the open: the Northridge earthquake in 1994 that devastated our area, the fire that killed our neighbor Carol in 1995, made us aware that we were surrounded by lovely people we didn't know. A neighbor down the street, observing that we really ought to get together when a disaster wasn't happening, hosted a potluck party not long after the 1995 fire. We laughed and hugged and promised to get together again soon. But we didn't. The mind-numbing commutes, work hours and inertia proved to be too much.

When we sold our home of 29 years and left Valencia two years ago, only Dan and Lydie knew us well enough to say "Goodbye" and to keep in touch. 

Things are very different now.

We know our new neighbors here well and, despite differences in life experiences, political opinions, religious beliefs and interests, we've become an extended family with all that implies -- from celebrations to spats to comfortable drop-in visits and stories and feelings shared.

It's delightful.

Sometimes it can be life-saving.

My friend Kim recently told me that a neighbor of hers who is an insulin-dependent diabetic had a foot wound that he had been ignoring -- until several neighbors, including Kim, nagged him repeatedly to go see his doctor. And his doctor said he had sought treatment just in time to prevent more serious complications.

It is often life-enhancing.

As neighbors, we share special moments and sad times. We have a chance to experience and to see acts of kindness and times of courage.

The other day, my next door neighbor Louise baked a cake and hosted a birthday party for our neighbor Padma -- despite the fact that Louise had a houseful of kids and grandkids visiting from Seattle and that she was also suffering from a kidney stone. She smiled through the party -- with 23 invited guests -- and very few realized her personal agony (from the kidney stone not from visiting family!)

And neighbors grieved this week when Phyllis' sweet and beautiful 12-year-old canary Nelson died. News travels fast: I was driving down the main boulevard this morning in our golf cart when I spotted Marsha walking her dog. Marsha, who lives about a block away from Phyllis, flagged me down to ask anxiously about Phyllis' latest heath crisis and also to double-check the news about Nelson. "I heard that Nelson has passed away," she said. "Is that true? Oh, no. Of all her pets, Nelson was my favorite. He was such a sweet little bird who sang so beautifully."

And everyone has been concerned this week about Phyllis herself, in the hospital for the fourth time in as many months, this time for emergency surgery. We're all hoping and praying that this surgery, at last, will help her to regain her health and vitality.

And I wonder: is our new-found closeness with our neighbors the result of all of us having more time now that most of us are retired?

Is it because we all come from different places and are willing and eager to create a new circle of friends in this new community?

Is it because we have new priorities now that the demands of our jobs and commutes are gone, the kids raised and we can focus on connecting with neighbors, on building new dreams and re-discovering old pleasures?

Maybe it's all of the above.

Walking down the street, as I pass each house, I think of the people who live there and marvel. I know their names. I know -- to varying degrees -- who they are. I enjoy every one of them and feel comfort in their warm friendship.

In some ways, it feels like a trip back to my childhood, visiting my grandparents' small Kansas town and back home in suburban Los Angeles, in the exuberant years after the end of World War II in a neighborhood filled with my childhood friends and their parents who befriended my parents. We were all extended family, sharing life's ups and downs, together.

All these years later, it's truly wonderful to have re-discovered a real community of new friends who feel so very much like family.

I love the fact that we look out for each other.