Biggest item
on my agenda today was making sure my mom got everything out of her old refrigerator
(with broken freezer) in time for the nice delivery people to install her a
shiny new one. May not seem like much. Then again, those of us blessed to have
mothers to help or who’ve ever endured this task on our own know there are
endless opportunities for error (starting with the fact, that the people
scheduling said deliveries are in another country, if not another planet, while
their delivering representatives here on the ground (i.e. in her driveway) are
stuck waiting for being two hours too early. (I’m thinking
appliance folks should team up with cable people. For once I actually wanted a
4-hour delivery window, but I digress…This is not a blog about refrigerator
deliveries. Nor is it a blog about tossing age old contents from a 20-year old
frig much as I’d love to make it that, cause leave it to my frugal Mom to have
frozen coconut dating back to 2004, but again, I digress.)
Instead,
this is a blog about yet another unspoken plus that epitomizes country living,
which is to say: neighbors.
Mom thanked
me profusely for coming in like a drill sergeant when I got word that the
delivery folks were in her drive (a full hour before their company was supposed
to even call her to confirm the afternoon appointment window). But in all honesty, I
can’t take full credit. Yes, I’m wired to roll with last minute changes, while
focusing on the end game, but truth be told, It takes a village. And more and
more these days, my village of neighbors is every bit as much family as Mom (
again… another example of life lived in circles and cycles and not straight
lines).
Let me give
you a glimpse of where mine came in to play:
Somewhere
between morning routines and fielding Mom’s call that the delivery folks were
coming early, I hear a knock on my door (sound effects accompanied by barking
dogs). Turns out it was my neighbor and farming mentor Thurman, just stopping
by on his tractor to check my soil while confirming we’ve got goats to drench
before Saturday (“drench” meaning
“de-worming” by way of a formula that must be squirted into their little goat
mouths by syringe (minus the needle part)—It’s a two person
proposition--one to hold/one to squirt--so I’ll need help. Thurman was on top of it. Got goats going to
auction this weekend. Gotta get ‘em ready.
Before that,
my first text of the day was from another neighbor confirming, “yes” I could
borrow some coolers (for the Mom-frig operation) …and that he’d left ‘em
outside his garage.
While
pulling together the rest of what Mom needed (mostly ice, from two freezers,
another neighbor-assisted gesture enhanced by the orange buckets I’d yet to
return to the kind one who brought my dogs meat scraps a couple of weeks back). I got a call from my next door neighbor, wanting to borrow my little green wagon to haul some stuff
from one place to another in her yard…the most difficult part of the task being
us clearing a path in my messy garage to get it out.
All this to
say: It really does take a village. And while I am comfy in the role of idiot, I must say I adore the fact that
when something needs doing in the country (at least on the street I live on) no
one worries too much about “Is it ok to ask?” or “Will they think I’m
imposing?” No. In the country, when someone says, “What are you doing today?”
You answer quite honestly, and you don’t hesitate to say, “Oh, and by the way,
can I borrow _________?” (Fill in the blank.)
It’s kinda
new for a girl who would otherwise never impose.
But in the
country, it doesn’t feel like imposing.
It feels
like what family does for family when a need arises.
In the end,
there is family we’re born to, and family we live by, and even family we get to
choose.
Even more
fun when life lets you blend ‘em all together.
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