A few days have passed. My attitude is a bit better and I have had a some time to think about those ideas. Mostly I wanted to come back here and add some very important notes to my thoughts. All that being said - all that from my previous post - I am thankful to say that although I don't have the kinds of friendships I used to have with other women, the friendships I do have are absolutely, without a doubt, wonderful. As it turns out, the women in my own family really are the best of friends. I have a sister-in-law that I long to spend more time with - geography - it matters. I have grown daughters who I adore, and we enjoy dates together sometimes although not as often as any of us would like. This is friendship that binds us even beyond the family ties.
Interestingly, looking back over the year or two, I recognized a theme that has surfaced several times and from several sources. How often are we encouraged to start right where we are in developing and nurturing friendships? The idea of being a "good neighbor" has been brought to the forefront of my mind. I mean right here in my own neighborhood, you know, where I physically live. It's not a metaphor for the world of "neighbors". I mean the street and block where I make a house a home with my family. We have just shy of 200 homes in our suburban neighborhood and I know very few of my neighbors despite the fact that we have lived here for nearly 14 years now. That's really sad if you think about it. But I bet I'm not the only one.
We are a retired military family and this is NOT how it has always been. We spent 20 years moving every couple of years and I learned early on that if I wanted to enjoy my time at the place we were I needed to settle pretty quickly and waste no time being bashful about introducing myself and getting to know my neighbors. When we first moved into this neighborhood it was a bit like that. There was a lot of military families, and although it was not base housing, most of us still had the mindset of getting to know our neighbors and spending time with them in the backyard, or as in our case more often than not the front yard. We had back-yard-bbqs, block parties, bunco and neighbors who felt free to visit in their pj's, cup of coffee in hand and ask for sugar. Ask my brother, he'll tell you about the one who surprised him one morning during his visit :-) We even have a social media group to communicate in the community and it was great... until it wasn't. People moved out, others moved in and people just got cranky and sometimes outright mean. Things started to fall apart in the neighborhood. I don't do well with conflict and we had our own stuff happening (2009), so I crawled under that rock I mentioned.
It's 2016 - seven years later. I don't live under a rock any more, but I still live in a self-imposed isolation.
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