Thankful For My Neighborhood

Sometimes it's important to stop, smell the roses, and take stock of the good things in our lives.

Today I'm speaking of the neighborhood in which I live.

I reside on a dead end street that has about 30 cape cod style houses. A development that was built in the early 1950s, many of the original owners still live here. We are near a lake with a beach among the rolling hills of suburbia.

Everyone knows each other and we all wave and smile as each other drives by. We know each other's business; just enough to be helpful but not enough to be nosy. We loan tools and offer assistance with chores, rides for the kids, etc. I used to snowblow the driveway for an elderly neighbor across the street during the winter. She died last February at the age of 90. I knew her, and most of my neighbors, my entire life.

I'm reminiscing because another person I grew up with just bought back into the neighborhood and we were chatting yesterday about how we didn't know how good we had it growing up until we moved away. And now many of us are finding our way back. Of course, my time growing up here would have been easier had I not been gay, but those problems would have been with me regardless.

Besides me, three other friends from my childhood now live here with their elderly parents. Including the man I mentioned above, three have now bought back into the neighborhood as houses have become available.

After spending 20 years in California running from here (and those parts of myself I have come to embrace), I now find that I like it here.