I used to feel pretty isolated in our neighborhood. It’s not that anyone was openly unfriendly, we just didn’t talk to each other very much.

We aren’t the type of neighborhood that has block parties and drinks beer together while we listen to good music, shouting at our kids and our dogs, and contemplating the trajectory of the universe as the sun goes down.

We prefer to do those activities separately.

Gradually, all of us being stuck home all the time meant that we became aware of each other’s schedules in a different way. We’d see each other regularly at certain times of day. Somehow, instead of avoiding eye contact, we started to trade a smile or a wave.

Our neighbors across the street have become “our friends” and “the uncles.” Our next door neighbor has become our mechanic and our oldest son’s part-time employer. Our yard has become our neighbor’s rabbit’s Airbnb.

On my daily walks, I started to see the same people from day to day, and sometimes our greetings would build upon the greeting of the day before.

A new neighbor moved in a few blocks away and plopped an enormous number of mature hostas on the curb some weeks ago. I eyed them as I went by on my walk, appreciating the utility of sharing them.

I slipped back later that evening in the car with empty pots and made off with a load of them. I wanted to leave a note of thanks, but because of where they were left, I’m not completely sure which house they came from. 

Feeling optimistic, I posted on Freecycle that I was looking for rocks for landscaping. Someone answered. She was so kind, she entertained the many questions of my kids while I hauled rocks into the back of the car. She invited us to come back for a second load, and we did (for the second trip, I brought my teenage son, which made the rocks somewhat less free, but was totally worth it).

Like it does every year whether we take advantage or not, our city provided free mulch and compost. (This may be sacrilege, but I used the compost to fill holes in the yard.)

Slowly, our yard changed. I replaced packed dirt with patches of grass. We built rain gardens which may or may not work, but look nice.

The back section of the yard, a combination of a dump and a shanty town of my kids’ making, is now a dump and shanty town with two big flower beds of hostas and a few sale hydrangeas, surrounded by free rocks. We even built some cairns to remind us of the trail markers on our 2016 road trip.

Thanks to the generosity of neighbors, our yard is looking pretty good. Our neighbors who put their lawn clippings and leaves into bags and left them our for the city to take and turn into mulch and compost. Our neighbors who shared rocks and hostas.

Our neighbors who waved and smiled back at us even though it wasn’t the traditional time to do so, which is in the dead of winter as we shovel our cars out.

We spend more time outside, working and playing, not really WITH our neighbors, but companionably nearby.

Even without the pandemic, I doubt we’ll have block parties any time soon. Yet there is an awareness of the greater organism now. The energy outside feels different. There’s a connectivity among the dwellings.

It only took 12 years and a pandemic, but it feels like we’ve found a place in our city where we belong, where the people who live nearby are not separate, but parts of the same whole.