I grew up in a small neighborhood in a smallish town. We lived smack in the middle of our street. On the north end were two families who went to our church and school. They were both the type of neighbors who would invite you to a weekend bonfire, or who you could call if you realized you were out of eggs in the middle of baking a boxed cake mix. If these were our only neighbor friends, I think we could have called ourselves lucky.
But on the south end of our street were two families who became our family. There were nine kids between our three families, and to the best of my memory, neither of the mothers worked outside the home during most of my childhood. I don’t think these were choices borne from the privilege of thriving on one income; one of the moms lived with a chronic disability and the other had five children, which would have made paying for childcare an upside-down equation.
My parents were divorced, and my mom raised my brother and me as a single parent from the time we were about 4 and 5 until we were 10 and 11. It’s difficult to overstate the critical community that these two families - especially the women - provided for my mom, my brother, and me.
If I was sick, and my mom couldn’t take the day off, I spent the day at the neighbor’s house watching Mary Kate and Ashley movies. If we missed the bus or needed a ride to or from an activity, there were drivers we could call. On Friday nights in the winter we would make homemade pizza and watch Boy Meets World. In the summer it was burgers and a backyard bonfire.
As a kid, it was comforting to have these extra, safe adults in my life. For my mom it must have been life-giving. She had two best friends who lived down the street, as well as two men who cared about her and her children, and who never thought twice about plowing our driveway or helping to clear brush after a storm.
In short, I grew up with a palpable understanding of the role that good neighbors can play in our lives - but it took me a while to find that as an adult. I moved in with my now-husband in 2012, and we got married in 2014. When we moved to our current home in 2015, I think we had the sense that it was a fun, tight-knit neighborhood, but we oscillated between feeling like we didn’t really want to make new friends, and realizing that we did, but wondering if we’d missed the window.
It wasn’t until summer of 2020 that we finally started hanging out with our neighbors. It was awkward at first, in part because making friends as an adult is always awkward. And in part because we’d spent five years saying hello to these neighbors but rarely interacting with them. How we became close friends with our neighbors is maybe a story for another day, but suffice it to say: I’m so glad we did. (Finally) having neighbor friends has been incredible for our family, and they truly feel like part of our “village.”
Our neighbors are our social circle
I cannot overstate how incredible it is - especially when you’re a parent - to have a bunch of people who live right down the street that you also love to hang out with. These days, it can feel like an epic feat to schedule a dinner with friends. You can spend days or weeks texting to determine a date weeks or months in the future, and when that date arrives, there’s a good chance somebody will have to cancel because, life. With our crew of neighbors (almost a dozen families), it’s so easy to send out a text for an impromptu gathering. If a few people can make it, great. You’ll catch everybody else next time.
We got lucky to find a group of neighbors with similar interests. (Okay, those interests are watching and playing sports, and social drinking - ideally outside. So not all that niche.) I’m the captain of a neighborhood sand volleyball team that plays at a bar down the street. The guys play golf weekly in the summer and watch football on Thursdays in the winter while comparing their fantasy football results. We have holiday parties and Halloween parties and rodeo parties and pool parties. During daytime gatherings, all of our kids play together, but the real benefit of neighbor friends is that you can put your kids to bed then TURN ON THE WIFI ENABLED BABY MONITOR AND WALK DOWN THE STREET TO SEE YOUR FRIENDS.
Our neighbors are our kids’ social circle
Just as important as adult relationships, I love that my kids have so many friendships within our neighborhood. As a kid, I was always hopping on my bike to go hang out at a friend’s house, and I love that our kids can do that too. Our friend group’s kids range from under-1 to middle school, and they are so great about playing across genders and age ranges. Last weekend, we invited all the neighbors over for ping pong and Nintendo, and the first to arrive were 9- and 11-year-old brothers to play Mario Kart with our 4- and 6-year-olds. I love that my kids have friends who look out for them on the bus, and help to keep an eye on them in the neighborhood.
The day-to-day socializing is important, but it also gives me so much comfort to know that our kids know and trust other adults in the neighborhood. Several of us work from home, and I know that if we ever had an emergency situation where we couldn’t be home after school, it would be easy to find somebody to take our kids. Not only would they be safe, but they would feel at home and have fun with their friends.
We pool resources
Our neighborhood isn’t a utopian compound, but I’m proud of the way we share resources, from our time to our expertise to our belongings. This can take many forms:
A bunch of us have gotten super into pickleball, so my husband and I split the cost of a pickleball net with another couple. Our street is exactly the right width, so we painted a court (black spray paint is perfect!) and had many awesome family pickleball afternoons this summer.
There’s a pond behind one of the streets in our neighborhood. We have a bunch of hockey lovers, so a few of the dads work together to create and maintain a rink every winter.
One family has a pool and generously invites us all over a few times a month in the summer. It’s such a great opportunity for the kids to have fun and for the adults to relax together.
We watch each other’s kids and we don’t keep score. I find parenting to be much less work when there are four or six kids instead of just my two. I’ve been working to seed the idea of an after-school co-op, which hasn’t really taken root. But in the meantime, I’m happy to have friends over to our house and to know that my kids are safe and happy at the neighbors’.
When I reflect on the richness that my neighbors have added to my life over the past couple years, it really comes down to connection and community. I’ll never forget the day Roe was overturned with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision. After spending our Friday intermittently working and doomscrolling, we all came out for a night of pickleball. The adults took turns playing, we let the little ones try it out, and we gently heckled the older kids for playing in Crocs. We had to rig up a light because, despite the late-June sunset, we played long after dark. On the sidelines, we discussed our fear and our anger, but we didn’t look at our phones. We found joy and solidarity on a dark day, and we reminded each other - both explicitly and wordlessly - that we are in it together.
What is your neighborhood like? Have you found it challenging to become friends with your neighbors? What’s the best part of neighborhood friends?