Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Love Thy Neighbour

For those of you that don't live in the immediate Hamilton/Niagara region, we got about a foot and a half of snow over the last 36 hours. The worst part of it is that most of the snow came overnight, so everyone's cars were snowed in, everyone's doors were snowed in, and perhaps the worst part of all was that I had a dog with a full bladder wanting to get out!

Since we moved into this survey just over 6 months ago, we've been blessed to meet some great neighbours. The two young ladies on either side of us are great people. The one to our right, Vanessa, is a single mom that just had a baby, she is nice to talk with and she loves Spencer, and he loves anyone who will look at him. The lady on our left, Michelle, is another single mom, but her two kids are older, still in grade school though. Natasha and I have taken a real liking to Michelle, her and Natasha frequently go shopping together...luckily it's at Walmart, so nothing too dangerous. Other than those two, we really haven't met too many people around here.

That all changed this morning. When I braved the cold weather to try to dig out my walk-way, I remembered that my shovel broke right in half last night trying to do the same thing. One of Michelle's kids offered to go to Vanessa's house for me to borrow her shovel, he brought it right to my door. As I began shoveling, I noticed that just about everyone else was doing the exact same thing. People were just randomly shoveling around the survey and trying to get people's cars un-stuck from the snow drifts. This really struck me as something very 'neighbourly', not something you'd really expect in this day-in-age. After most of the work was done, 'Thank Yous' were exchanged, and people went on their merry way. For that brief moment in time, everyone was working toward the same goal, once the goal was mostly achieved, things became normal again.

So, just so you know, nice people are out there, it just sometimes takes a foot and a half of snow for you to see them...as brief as it may be.

3 comments:

Kim said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kim said...

It's amazing how people so easily work together in times of crisis or when there is a common goal. Imagine how wonderful it would be if that same sense of neighborliness happened 'just because'! We could move mountains. By the amount of snow we shoveled in the past day I think we did move mountains :) I actually am one of the weird people who love huge dumpings of snow, maybe that's one of the reasons.

patsyrose said...

You will find that things didn't go back to "normal". You and your neighbors will have become closer and friendlier because of the shoveling. You've "broken the ice", so to speak!