A Sadness to See

This past Monday was the Feast of St. Valentine. This is the first year I tried to really focus on praying for some intercessions of Valentine for love to spread in the world.

It was also the first Valentine's Day that Randy and I went out for dinner. Generally we've either stayed in to avoid the crowds of done babysitting at our past parishes so other couples could enjoy the evening.

In any case, I asked Randy to be in charge of the date night and he came through beautifully. But the night started off with a sad event.

We had made arrangements to drop the girls off at one of our HS youth who lived near the church. Randy had her address but no phone number. We stopped at the house, rang the doorbell and waited, the twins in our arms.

No answer.

More doorbell ringing, more waiting. FInally, an answer. But Caroline, our babysitter didn't live there. It was at this point we both looked at one another, silently wondering if the evening was ruined. We quickly drove back to the church to look up her address again and dodged the girls' crying of where Caroline was.

Turns out we were one house off. We had rung the doorbell at 510. Caroline lived at 512. Her next door neighbors didn't know who she was. Didn't know the last name of their neighbors.

In that moment, my heart broke. I grew up in a small-ish town in Iowa (population 6,000). I knew everyone in my neighborhood of eight blocks. A quick estimate puts that at 45+ houses. Ok, as a kid I only knew about 30 of the families...the ones with kids or who gave out good treats at Halloween, but my parents knew everyone by name and sight, even though we didn't have block parties or neighborhood get togethers.

That someone wouldn't even recognize the last name of their next door neighbor made me so very sad. We've grown isolated as a society, not knowing, caring, or trusting our neighbors enough to introduce ourselves. I sincerely hope you make an effort to know your neighbors.

When Randy and I are able to again live in our own home we will make a concerted effort to know our neighbors - it's important to us both. For now, though, we do know our neighbors...two houses on either side and four houses across the street. It's a start.