by Linda S. Mills

Created on: September 21, 2009   Last Updated: August 13, 2010

When I was a child, my family lived in an apartment building in the inner city of Chicago.  Though it feels like the Stone Age now, Chicago in those days, was still defined by small neighborhood enclaves, skirted with mom and pop groceries, diners and small store fronts.  We rode our bikes to our friends’ houses, both day and night.  We walked to school in a big group of kids, and at the end of the day, someone’s mother would always open her door and feed us a snack.

The last thing on our minds was how to get our neighbors together.  Our lives flowed and intertwined with the rhythm of our days.  Our parents freely borrowed sugar and milk, jump-started each other's cars in the dead of winter, and congregated on folding lawn chairs during hot summer nights.

That old neighborhood, lined with brownstones and concrete sidewalks, was rich in what we now call 'cultural diversity'.  But we didn’t know that then.  To us, our quirky mélange of native Mid-Westerners, European immigrants and Holocaust survivors was just a simple group of people trying to get along in the world.   We were more concerned with what we could find in common rather than our differences - and our mutual well-being depended upon it. 

Today my family and I live in a fenced-off house in the suburbs.  Those lawn chairs, that once joined a congregation of neighbors, sit in a small solitary circle inside our landscaped backyard.  Our neighbors are pleasant and well-meaning and, though this is not the cozy community I grew up in, we recognize that the quality of our lives and the safety of our neighborhood grows stronger when we make the effort to connect with one another.   

Several of the neighbors have taken up golf together.  Others have formed a monthly book group around the need for some stimulating conversation and an excuse to eat a gooey, homemade dessert.  Younger parents have organized a babysitting co-op, and a few of us grow vegetable gardens and enjoy sharing our lettuce, beets and tomatoes.  Our block looks forward to an annual, multi-family garage sale where we marvel at the quality of each other’s junk.

We water one another’s flowers during vacation times and clean the streets together after windstorms and 4th of July fireworks.  Some of us ‘old-timers’ who have lived side-by-side for years

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