It’s been a fun forty-eight hours in the Mid-Atlantic. The Snowpocoplypse of 2009 blew through and gave us our first good hit in years. Of course, this being Maryland, people LOST THEIR MINDS, which is fun in its own right. A thumping good snow storm is no excuse for being a jerk, however, and when the hard work of digging out started this morning, I was struck by how just quickly a snow shovel can define the word ‘neighbor.’
The townhouse court I live in is fairly average. It’s filled with passing waves and smiles, polite greetings and the occasional chit-chat, without any serious intimacy. Most of us find ourselves too hassled by the working world, too stretched by other demands, to really get to know one another. It’s a slightly sad state of affairs, I suppose, to be so emotionally distant from people so physically close, but also an easily excused one since we all deal with similar problems. On occasion, though, the neighborhood turns out and makes me grateful for where I live.
All I meant to do was go out with my wife and shovel around our cars. It wasn’t going to take that long, and I’d be back inside to my coffee in no time. Once I made it outside, though, I found that the plan had been changed for me. A handful of neighbors (including my wife, who had been out since before my first grunt of the morning) were already neck deep in the snow around my Jeep. They were digging me out so they could get to the next car in the lot, whose owner was neither awake nor able to really do it himself. Oh, I’m sure he could have managed, but not without considerable risk to his heart. Plus, with 20 inches of snow, there was no way an ambulance was making it down our street. So, feeling behind and ever so slightly emasculated, I jumped into the fray.
For the next three hours, four or five of us worked together to shift more snow than I care to remember. We dug out our cars, along with the spots of a few people who couldn’t or shouldn’t have been outside. We freed one woman’s car from the top of the court where she had gotten stuck the night before. We shoveled in shifts and we shoveled shoulder to shoulder. When the plow driver finally turned up, we took a breather before cleaning up the foot high ridges he left on the blacktop. In the background, a pair of neighborhood daughters lobbed snow balls and slid down the hill we made with load after load of fresh powder. After a while, a few more people surfaced and, while some joined us for a spell, most didn’t. It was here that I started to see a line being drawn in the court.
It was ever so surreptitiously that the difference started to appear. As our little group worked together–talking and joking about pooling our collective ibuprofen resources–other neighbors came out and cleaned off their own cars. They didn’t seem interested or willing to jump into the collective effort and some didn’t even return our waves. They averted their eyes, as though we were going to guilt trip them into helping. One guy even went so far as to scrape the snow off his car (with a metal shovel!) right into a spot someone had already cleared. Without comment or apology, he walked away to clean off his deck. I still can’t get over how self-centered some people can be. It shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose, given that I see it every day working in a high school. Nevertheless, I was especially hopeful that people would see the beginning of a group effort and just naturally join in. I know that there’s not much connection between all of us on the court, but we still live next to one another and that has to count for something.
Fortunately, to some people the idea still has merit. Those around me cared enough about each other to help. More than that, they cared enough about their neighbors to dig out their cars without being asked and without a single expectation of thanks. There was no glancing at windows or knocking on doors to say ‘Hey! We did this, aren’t we great?’ It just got done because it was the right thing to do. The snow was a wonderful motivator in that respect. Since it had shut most everything down, the busy world couldn’t be quite so persuasive in its demand for forward motion. Instead of being wrapped up in our usual concerns, we were forced to slow down and take more notice of one another. It was by no means everyone, but it was certainly enough to refill my faith-in-humanity-meter. And on the last Sunday before Christmas, the timing could have scarcely been more perfect.
Towards the end of the morning, it was just me and one other guy working around the last car. Pete, some fifteen years my senior, turned to me and said, “You know, Chris, it’s days like today that you really find the neighbors you can count on.” The statement stopped me. I was flattered and a little embarrassed to be included in that estimation, but it also made me consider the word ‘neighbor.’ It’s more than simple geography. It starts there, sure, gives us a reason to care, but there’s more to it than that. The way I saw it today, being a neighbor means giving a damn about the people you live around, regardless of how they feel about you. It means putting aside that me first and F the world attitude long enough to remember that real community still matters. You can have all the Facebook friends you want, but it’s the people next door who can walk over with a shovel.
