When I take students to Biloxi, we try to craft the narrative so they will both understand and get the best out of the experience. I think I explain it best to new students when I say we are just neighbors helping neighbors, besides the fact that we do not live there. This promotes a better sense of kinship, and also tears down some of the differences between us. If we think that in 2018, we are helping people in Biloxi and somewhere down the road, they or others will help us -- this explanation helps the new ones understand why we do things. We try to the best neighbors we can be. I grew up on the Holyoke, Apple Valley, Pebble Hill subdivision in Affton in a very idyllic setting. Holyoke is only one block long. And we knew every neighbor, neighbors that would do anything for us, and we would do anything to help a neighbor. That is what community looks like. There were always dinners being made for neighbors in tough times, and we would receive dinners also when my dad got sick. I have not known my neighbors that well in some of my living places, and also here on Murdoch. But just to the east, I have two neighbors who with their kindness and their kinship reached out to me and did not allow me to be a stranger.
When I first moved in it was Alfred, who was born in Ghana, and Kirsten and the older kids Kathyrn and Miles, and they were two little boys that just made me laugh, especially when I could hear them planning their play or their sled runs right out my window. Kathryn and Miles have both grown and moved out and got married or planning to get married. And the two little guys are on their path to be learned young men, who know how to play instruments, read, play sports, and explore their world with a curiosity.
I don't think I have ever met a person kinder and more ready to do for others than Alfred. It is amazing that in all of this xenophobic talk about people from other countries. I wonder how many people have ever had neighbors from other countries. I know my dog, Max, liked his immigrant neighbors on Bancroft from Bosnia. He would sprint outside when he heard the callings of an older Bosnian woman talking in her native tongue. I had the only bilingual dog on the south side. But soon after words of greetings, this woman would throw some kind of sausage or meat to Max over the fence and Max was content. I now know Max' joy, there is not a time that I see Alfred outside that I do not smile or begin to laugh. I sprint out of the house, my tail wagging, and get not Bosnian meat, but a true friendship and true kindness from my neighbor. He always begins our conversations with a calming, friendly "Hello, John" and then we get to the details of the day. He is an amazing gardener and loves working outside. He often will not rest until the task I need to do outside is done. He has gotten his panga?? (machete) out to help me remove a bush, and I literally watched as he did all the work. It was so much fun this year, when I walked into Home Depot and saw a brand new machete with case on sale. It was his that day. Alfred has also been my neighbor, through all my troubles of finding work and finding my place in the world. He was always there with a sympathetic ear and 100 words of encouragement for each word I spoke of woe.
Kirsten is a worker, she works hard. She used to often just cut my grass and mutter something vaguely about needing the mulch for their garden. I am glad the boys are now old enough to cut my grass and I can pay them, but since I am almost never home when the grass is cut, I suspect she is very involved. I love the fact that she is a librarian and pursues knowledge every day, I can very much see that in the choices that she and Alfred make for her boys. They well on their way to understanding music, the arts, and the world around them. Having young kids is a lot of running around in mini-vans and I catch glimpses of the Abotsi minivan being packed up for the next activity or adventure. It is obvious in every action that Kirsten and Alfred take that they love their boys and are doing everything they can for them.
Sometime in the next week or two, Alfred and I will probably be outside removing a large branch from my tree that is now half hanging there. I will probably start working on it, but soon my wonderful neighbor will be at my side doing most of the work. He will do it with a smile and a laugh and the work will not be a chore, but just an act of friendship between two neighbors.
The young boys had bike helmets that had faces and hair on them. So when they rode their bikes down my driveway, a great hill for 7 year olds, not so much for 11 year olds, it just made me laugh watching these boys play with the cartoon faces on their helmets. They grow old and wiser, and soon maybe I will be helping them with their Algebra homework, but in some ways they will always be the two cute little kids with their bike helmets. I know through Kirsten's posts that she is very concerned about Police violence to young black men -- I share her concern, but without the same skin in the game, no pun intended, that she does. It is interesting though in the way those concerns have now progressed in my head. I do not see Trayvon Martin as a threat with a hoody, I realize that he was some body's seven year old neighbor, riding his bike around the neighborhood with a funny helmet or a funny shirt. So now for Kirsten and Alfred and me, the timetable is real, somehow we must end this violence this profiling before the two little guys with the funny helmets grow to an age where they threaten people who have not bothered to understand our world. I pray, I just stopped here and prayed, that these gaps in our understanding of each other can be solved in a small amount of years. I just realized we need more prayers and more people marching, a lot more people praying and marching.
I had the best neighbors in the world, Mrs. Schieber still follows my life in her words and her prayers, 50 years later. I cannot tell you what the words of Phyllis Allen did to a young boy in her carpool to SLUH. The quiet guidance of Mrs. Krings, a true angel or the example of a true working man in Mr. Wolf. These people lived on my street and showed me the examples of how to be their for each other. Of course, it was led by my parents who were always doing something for a neighbor.
Look at the picture to your right, it is the most wonderful people in the world, my neighbor's the Abotsi family. Of course, their is an extra baby there, just normal for a family who is always ready to help someone else. I was trying to think of a caption for the picture, and I was thinking about all the neighbors depicted on TV years ago, Minnie and Jerry Helper on Dick Van Dyke, Mrs. Mondelo and Larry on Leave it to Beaver, all the neighbors on the Andy Griffith Show. I had listed them all, but after writing this I just put the ones from the Dick Van Dyke show.
My neighbors are the Helper's. Sometimes it is just that simple.
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