day seven: won't you be my neighbor?

Fred McFeely Rogers (A.K.A. Mister Rogers) passed away 9 years ago this week. As a fellow minister and cardigan-lover, I thought it appropriate to pay tribute to this legend of public television by being a good neighbor myself.

Hi, neighbor!

A young woman recently moved into the house behind ours, and another couple bought a house a few doors down. We have seen them around and met the woman behind us, Stephanie. We hadn't yet met the couple a few doors up, but we saw them when the house sold and when they moved in.

We thought we would do something to welcome them all to the neighborhood. So I stayed up late last night to bake chocolate chip cookies (sans nuts).

Chocolate chip cookies are my drug of choice. I'm addicted. I eat them just because they make me feel good. It doesn't matter whether they are homemade Tollhouse or store-bought break-and-bakes, I have no self-control. So after licking the mixing beaters, eating a few spoonfuls of dough, and downing half a dozen warm cookies out of the oven, I wrapped up some cookies to take to our new neighbors (leaving a few for breakfast this morning, of course).

We took the cookies by this afternoon, and both Stephanie and Brent (the man of the couple...the woman wasn't home) were very thankful.

This is the first time we've done something like this, although we've had lots of new people move into the neighborhood in the three years we've lived here. In fact, most of the time we don't meet them until months after they've moved in, when we just happen to see each other outside in our yards or walking. And I don't think we're the exception.

Why is it that we don't make a point to introduce ourselves? What is it that makes a "comfortable distance" so comfortable? Do we want to "test the waters" first? Get an idea of who they are? Make sure they're not going to mess up the neighborhood? Do we want to keep to ourselves so that they will hopefully keep to themselves and not intrude on our lives?

I don't know why we haven't done it before, but I'm glad we did this time and I hope we will in the future. I'm not under any illusions that we're going to be best friends with Stephanie or with Brent and his significant other. But I think it is telling that instead of referring to them as "the woman/couple who live(s) in that house," we call them "neighbors."