About ten years ago, MJ and i had a household's worth of stuff packed up in various places whilst living with a kindly family who welcomed us into their home for a couple of months. Occasionally, we would ride the rails and eat beans from a can. I became quite skilled on the blues harp as the two of us would dance outside small cafes and dive bars whistling for pennies. The judgmental ogling of the passersby effected us not; we had a song in our hearts what needed to be sung. Time wore on as time will often do and we finally settled into the house on Harvest Moon - nestled in sunny Summerfield Village - that would serve as our home for the next near decade.
About a year after our move, the allure of vacant strip malls, struggling mexican restaurants, and the ever present aroma of deep fried cod would bring our newlywed pals, the Hymans, to a new home just down the street in our lively neighborhood. Over the course of those next nine years, we would share many meals; make new friends; watch neighbors come and go; watch their houses become rental properties; celebrate the births of children; mourn the loss of children; house family members for extended periods of time; drink a whole lot of coffee; edit VBS videos; plan retreats and vacations; rant about the state of CGPC; talk about Jesus and the bible and tapeworms; watch Lost; eat kebobs and white chicken chili and pizza; fall asleep with bellies full of cantaloupe smoothie while Dirty Rotten Scoundrels played in Spanish; watch our sons and daughters become friends and go to school together and hit one another with pvc pipes; sell lots of junk for hundreds of dollars year after year; and support one another as we made tough decisions and hard transitions in jobs, family and life in general.
Through all of it, our friendship has remained in tact as we've shared life together.
Nine years later, just a couple weeks apart, our homes in picturesque Summerfield Village have both been sold by a realtor who gets shit done. And while our families are respectively excited about the possibilities of where we will make our homes next, it's all rather bittersweet when we realize that we'll not be living just a few doors down from each other very soon.
As i write this, neither MJ and myself nor our friends the Hymans have closed on a new home. We've been helping one another pack and move and clean - along with a few other friends who have also caught the moving bug - trying not to think too much about the distance that will find itself between us. We should all be so lucky to find neighbors who are as caring and generous of friends as the Hymans have been to us over these last nine years. Now, as we all pack up our kids and take to the rails to whistle for pennies indefinitely, we imagine opportunities for new neighbors, and creative ways of sharing life together, and one day celebrating our children's children all while reminiscing of those days on Harvest Moon Drive when the kids would climb the fence and run each other over in the Barbie Jeep and learn how to love each other.
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