Community

After an extremely frustrating school board subcommittee meeting this morning that lasted almost four hours, I ran a couple of quick errands and then dashed home to take my poor dog for a walk--she loves getting out of the house and I felt guilty for leaving her inside for so long.

As we got to the end of the driveway, a passing fuel oil truck honked, and I recognized the driver as the father of a kid on Thing One's basketball team.  A UPS truck was right behind it: its driver has had our route for years and he knows me from deliveries to our house.  He honked and waved, too.  Then, a few minutes later, we got around the corner to the house with the three annoying little rat dogs in coats that always run out to yap at my dog. Their owner happened to turn into the driveway as we passed, and I recognized him from church....I'd had no idea he was a neighbor too.  It's a small world around here, and generally that's a good thing.  Ten plus years in, I feel like I have a place in this small world, and that's appealing after my highly peripatetic childhood.   I was thinking warm fuzzies about community and belonging as the dog and I walked back home.

The funny thing is that these aren't my only people.  I'm hall monitoring right now while my kids are at CCD and catching up on the blogs I read, since it's quiet.  One of the new posts has to do with a breast lump that is being removed surgically this week.  I've never met the lump's owner (is that the right word??) in real life.  I'd probably recognize her if she walked up to me right now, but maybe not.  Her life is about as different from mine as it is humanly possible to get, too.  Nevertheless, courtesy of blog connections, I've known about the lump for some time.  I've worried about it, and she knew it. And when she scheduled the surgery, she made a point of telling me about it even though we've never met and she lives on the other side of the globe right now, quite literally.

Some friends, I see when I leave the house.  Others I only see online.  How fortunate am I to have both??