Community

When I was a little girl, we lived in fairly large development in Modesto, California.  (If that name rings a bell, it might be because of Lacey Peterson or Chandra Levy, but when I lived there, it was still a sleepy little cow town.)  I remember that it was rather daunting for my mother to move there from our small home town in New Jersey as well as from the farm in Pennsylvania where we'd lived for a few years directly before the move.

Shortly after we'd moved into the new neighborhood, there was a power outage.  (I don't know why, but they seemed to be fairly regular.  We didn't have electrical storms, so it wasn't that. . .maybe out there in the wild west they were still working the kinks out of electric wires.)

Anyway, the power went out in the late afternoon.  I think my dad must have been on shift work at the time, because it was just my mother and I at home.  She was a little rattled, and then there was a knock at the door.

It was one of our new neighbors, and when we ventured outside, we realized that just about everyone who lived the houses around us was there.  Someone explained that they did this every time the power went out.  We children played on the sidewalks while our parents stood in the streets, chatting and catching up.

That was my first real experience with community.  Over our next five years in California, three thousand miles away from our extended family, those neighbors became our support system.  I can still tell you that Barbara Baker lived across the street with her husband Bill and  three daughters, Debbie, Lisa and Jean.  The Regesters lived next door.  These were people who came over and helped when my mom was sick, celebrated birthdays and mourned losses with us.

Years later, my own husband and I moved to our very first permanent duty station with the Army.  We lived off post until I was pregnant with our first child, and then we moved onto Wheeler Air Force Base. I was pregnant and going to college, and I barely knew any of our neighbors, all of whom were other officers in the Army or Air Force.

The summer after Devyn was born, my husband was sent to Australia for a six week deployment.  I was left alone with a six month old baby.  All of our neighbors had moved over a two month period, and I didn't know anyone who had replaced them in the houses around us.

All that changed late one afternoon when my sweet kitten slipped out of the house and climbed a tree in the playground behind our house.  I was beside myself.  I stood outside with the baby in a backpack, looking up into the tree, calling to Tigger and alternately threatening and cajoling her.  I had been out there for about twenty minutes when a little girl wandered over.  She asked me what I was doing, and I explained about the cat.

Within a few minutes, all of my neighbors had joined me at the tree.  Someone offered to take the baby so I could bring out some cat treats.  One of the husbands grabbed a ladder and propped it up against the tree to try to get the cat down.

I don't remember what ultimately got the cat down, but I do know that after that day, I didn't just have neighbors--I had a new community.  Three of us had babies around the same age, we discovered, and we formed an impromptu play group.  We were there for each other.

You might think community is hard to find these days.  Most of us don't know our neighbors very well.  But it's there for us.  For me, much of my community is found on line, with women I don't see very often if at all.  These ladies who live around the country and the world offer me support and love, and I do the same with them.  Four of my best friends are women I met online through a homeschool curriculum support group.  My online writing group is loyal and supportive.  I love all these girls!

Where's your community?  Who's your support group?