Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself.
Leviticus 19:18


The September day my sister was born, I received four gold stars on my arithmetic paper and I was so excited I forgot to go to the bathroom before I left my second grade classroom. I ran all the way home waving my paper in the air like a victory proclamation and galloped up the back stairs. “Mama! Mama” I yelled “Wait 'til you see what Mrs. Weir gave me!”

I was a very small seven-year-old and had to stand on my tippy- toes to reach the doorknob. I grasped it in both hands but it wouldn’t turn. I kicked at the door and then I held the paper between my teeth and pounded the unmoving wooden panels with both fists. My knuckles turned red and the skin split open but still I beat against the blocked entrance into the warmth and security that had always been there for me.

My eyes filled and I couldn’t breathe. I was certain my mama had left me forever. She didn’t love me anymore because I hadn’t finished my milk at lunch. I would never see her again. She had forgotten all about me and now no one would give me ice cream and a chocolate cupcake or kiss the tip of my nose and tell me I was adorable ever again. I would die, hungry and sad, all alone on our back porch.

What was I to do? I had to go to the bathroom NOW. I wanted to curl up and disappear under the doormat but I was afraid I would wrinkle my beautiful arithmetic paper. “Mama, MAMA” I cried.

“Lynnie Ruth! Is that you?”

I looked up and saw the angel heaven had sent to save me. She was smiling from an open window and I could see a magic rainbow behind her. Her brown hair was haloed in gold and when she smiled, I saw the shimmer of stars. “Aunt Rose!” I said and waved my arithmetic lesson at her. “Oh Aunt Rose! I got 100 on my paper and…and…I lost my mommy.”

“I’ll send Natalie down for you, honey,” said my celestial savior. “Your mother went to the hospital today to get you a baby.”

I closed my eyes and felt my world snap back into its proper place. I smoothed out my arithmetic paper and opened my eyes. There was human comfort holding out her arms to me. “Oh, Natalie!” I said and I hurled myself into her arms. “I hope my baby is as wonderful as you!

“I think I wet my pants,” I whispered. “When I saw you I forgot to hold it.”

”What a compliment!” said Natalie and she took me upstairs to the woman I called Aunt Rose.

Aunt Rose was not my relative. Natalie was not a cousin. They were part of the family that lived upstairs in our duplex on Islington Street. They were neighbors. In those days our communication network was far less encompassing, and our neighbors were a part of our greater family. We were in the same small bowl of soup together and when one of us floundered, someone was always there to help steady his course.

After Aunt Rose settled me at her kitchen table and gave me a class of milk and a hydrox cookie, she called the neighbor two doors down the street. “Eve?” she said . “Ida went into the hospital today and I have Lynnie Ruth here. Can you pick her up on your way to school tomorrow when you take Marcia. I’d rather she didn’t have to walk there alone and I have to drive Harry to work. “

She paused and smiled into the phone. “That is lovely of you!’ she said “Lynnie will be thrilled. She just loves going to your house. She says you make the best tuna fish salad in the whole world.”

She hung up the telephone and picked up my arithmetic paper. “Four stars!” she exclaimed. “I always told your mother you were a genius. Won’t your Daddy be proud!”

In the week my mother was in the hospital, (that’s how long women stayed there in those days) I slept at Aunt Rose’s, had my lunch at Marcia Zimmermans’ and my Daddy and I had dinner twice at Aunt Hazel’s house (just around the corner) and once at Mrs. Berlin’s. (across the street) It does indeed take a village to give a child the comfort and love it needs to become whole, and in 1941, my “village” was up to the task.

Life has changed since that September day when I was snatched from tragedy by the woman upstairs. In this new millennium, I am not aware of my neighbors unless I violate a city code that offends them. They do not knock on my door with their complaints; they call the police or the city manager about my misdemeanor and they feel justified. I can still remember my shock when I brought my neighbor an African violet to console her because she had been locked out of her home, forced to cook and care for her family in her garage and she retaliated by reporting my barking dogs to the police. She was well within her rights and she pursued those rights until she managed to force me to take out an animal permit because my pet population exceeded the legal limit.

Another neighbor saw my fence being refurbished and believed it had been built on his property He did not call me about it. He reported me to the city building department and they pursued the matter. The days of conversations over the back fence have vanished and in their place, we use the telephone to complain about violations of city codes that violate our rights as property owners. There is nothing wrong with this of course, but I find nothing very neighborly about it either.

We think we have progressed far beyond that provincial era before the Second World War. We are globally connected by computers, voice mail and the television news and we know what is happening everywhere. We feed the hungry in Africa, save the neglected animals in Iraq, send medication to the sick in every corner of the world and march to save the third world from ignorance. No one is a stranger…and yet…no one is a friend, either. I sometimes wonder at the cost technology has extracted from our human community. When my Aunt Rose reached out to that trembling seven year old and swept her back into a secure world, she was communicating with me from one heart to another. My neighbors these days keep a watchful eye on me to be sure I don’t infringe on their rights, and I am always wary that I might overstep my bounds. But none of them have any knowledge of the workings of my heart. My Aunt Rose knew all about my little world because she was part of it. I loved her as if we were connected by blood and she cared about me as if I belonged to her and indeed in the larger sense I did. My mother didn’t think the woman upstairs had intruded on her privacy. She was grateful someone was there to comfort the child she left so suddenly. She had no time to call Rose, but she knew even as she and my father raced through the streets to St. Vincent’s Hospital that I would be in good hands. Aunt Rose would hear me at our door and she would be there for me just as my mother was always ready to share room, board, comfort and love with her. We were neighbors and in those days, that’s what neighbors were.

Your next-door neighbor is not a man;
he is an environment.
G. K. Chesterton