Neighborhoods

I'm still feeling pretty good, so we decided to make a trip back home to the Berkshires before starting chemo again on Thursday. We thought of staying until Wednesday, but then Mother Nature intervened. Yet another snowstorm is on its way, the umteenth one this winter. It's due to start Tuesday and go through Wednesday, both here and on the Cape. This time we have the trifecta coming: snow, sleet and freezing rain. So so we'll head back early Tuesday morning instead.

It feels good to see the old home again. There's a lot of snow, but then again it's the Berkshires. We've seen worse before. Shortly after we arrived, our neighbors down the street stopped up with a beautiful homemade card and lots of good wishes for us. They caught us up on the local goings-on, including the neighborhood youngsters, like their daughter, who are away at college for the first time. Our other neighbors across the street have kept a close eye on our house, taken in the mail, checked often to see that the pipes haven't frozen or the mice haven't taken over, and kept our walkways clear. Their high-school age son has kept our driveway clear - not an easy job this winter. We are lucky to live in a wonderful, close neighborhood. We have lived in our house for 33 years, and our three closest neighbors, all good friends, have lived here for at least 20 years. We all know we can count on each other when needed (our next-door neighbors have always been very generous, inviting us in summers to their lake house and when they are away for the holidays, always offering the use of their house for our kids to stay). We've watched our neighbors' kids grow up, and they've watched ours. One of our neighbors was a kid when we moved here and now owns the house he grew up in. Many other families in our three-block neighborhood are long-time residents.

I was fortunate to grow up in close neighborhoods. For my first seven years we lived in an apartment in the Bronx. I had "aunts" and "uncles" throughout the three-apartment neighborhood. The mothers all stayed home and everyone kept an eye on each other's kids. You couldn't get away with anything. After a few years of taking care of my grandfather, my parents bought a modest house in a small New Jersey town. It was a real country town, not unlike Lenox, and a great place for kids. Again we had a close neighborhood. Being the fifties, TV hadn't quite taken over people's lives yet (of course, there were no computers or smartphones yet, so no Facebook or Twitter or online games or any of the myriad other ways to be constantly distracted from real life), so we kids played outside and the adults gathered in the evenings to socialize. We were in and out of each other's houses, usually not bothering to knock if the neighbor was home. Just a shout and then open the door. Nancy grew up in a similar neighborhood in upstate New York as a young girl.

I have to mention our wonderful weekend. Our girls came up from the city. It was so good to see them. We celebrated my son's birthday (I can't believe I have a 38-year old son. I still remember when our rallying cry was "Don't trust anyone over 30"). The grandkids couldn't get enough of their aunties. The only thing that could have made it better was if Atlanta, home of my older son and his wife, was just around the corner.