Having Neighbors

There's a poem bubbling up in the back room of my mind about the dishes that live-between-homes here, passed back and forth, dishes filled with baked oats and fresh bread and strawberry pies and comfort and care and the essence of I love you, I see you, I'm here for you. There's usually a dish of mine in someone else's kitchen, and jars and pans taking a turn in our home that belong elsewhere. I never knew that's what belonging would feel like, like missing my 8x8 pyrex dish when I open the cabinet shelf.

There's another one about the Saturday market and greeting your plumber/friend there and your barista/friend who tells you without telling you she's carrying another baby and your mayor's reading on the grassy lawn to your toddler who isn't interested in the story so much as the massive peaches taunting from a shopping bag bursting with produce beside him. 

There's one about the three parks: cheese, town, castle. One's close, one's shady, one you hate but your kid love, and so on and so forth. Playgrounds are where you will meet all your next best friends, I would tell my graduating-from-college self. She would have stared back in confusion. How the times change, they do. And one day, these days, I spend my best hours pushing swings (higher, higher!) and saying how old is he? and she's so cute, look at those cheeks! But other moms are there and life happens and counsel happens and under the beating sun we make sense of these sacred, common days. 

Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. How, I ask myself? God, show me how. There's much much more to do, I know that. But I know I can start here. Bake something. Be here. Share the marrow of life with the humans who live right around me who so graciously share theirs with me.