A True Story Can Be a Parable
Our neighborhood was the greatest space. It offered football-field-sized back yard, a huge (never filled) lot great for running down. It rolled all the way to the tree lined river bank. The river behind was an inlet, the dead end of a branching off. The our front streets were clean and wide without much traffic. The houses were occupied by quiet people with big kids who had already used what was around each of them every day. Now they went on dates and went to college.
The grown ups probably always had been too busy working to get to know each other.
But by the time I came along. the neighborhood wasn’t much more than a huge space that people came to eat and sleep.
His name was Craig. I met him when he ran across the street the day that he moved in. He was wiry, smiling, energy. I was long, curious, sincerity. He was a smarter Charlie Brown. I was a nicer Lucy.
For a little guy, his voice was deep and slurry. I told my mom his name was “Ray.” He was 4. I was 5.
The big kids totally ignored us. But as it was we didn’t have time to find things boring.
We called it “going exploring.” We rolled down hills, walked river banks, climbed rocks, learned to skip a stone the hard way. We laid back under trees and talked about the shapes the leaves would make. We heard the lectures about grass stains.
We watched my younger, older brother cut the huge backyard in the shape of baseball diamond. I spent my birthday money knowing we’d play with what I brought home. We got generous (and in trouble) picking Rose’s peonies for our mothers. We didn’t know weren’t supposed to. Still Rose and Elmer still gave us pinwheel cookies when we cut through their yard.
And we got a little cranky, our moms would send us outside with two lawn chairs, some KoolAid, our lunch, and tell us to play the Traffic Game. We might have seen about 10 cars an hour.
The rules to the Traffic Game were simple …
- Choose a color. (Craig always choose blue or red — his favorite colors. I picked the best seller.)
- Count the cars of that color that drive by.
- The winner was the first to get to 21. It took a while.
We’d always start, but we never knew who won the game — it’s hard to have fun when you’re playing a game someone else made up..
We would do so many other fun things. We’d start with conversation — like the grownups had the kitchen table. That was while we got our lunch out of the way. We made up sci-fi stories about the people in the cars. We wondered how my school had letter grades when his school didn’t have report cards?
When lunch was officially over, we would use Craig’s magnifying glass to burn holes in the paper towel that had wrapped our sandwiches.
One day, we held auditions for a circus act. We held that magnifying glass to light a path for each fat black ant on the sidewalk — you might note fat black ants don’t have the right discipline to be in a circus.
In the middle of this serious auditioning, another kid ran up with a butterscotch cocker spaniel at his heels. He wanted to know what we were doing.
He said his name was Scotty. He lived in the house next door to Craig and his birthday was two days and two years after mine. We started showing him around. A few months later another family moved in, the three of us showed them the best way to attack the sledding hill and where to sit when you put your ice skates on by the river.
And in the spring, the six McGuire girls came — in time to see yard where the Tulip lady has tulips of every color and a windmill. It was a bike ride so close their parents wouldn’t mind. We learned the Dutch words for “Will you put on those wooden shoes by the door?”
By the time that Craig was 7 and I was 8, we had a community. We put on the best carnivals. Our parents paid to attend them. Our big brothers brought their big friends, including the girls — the ones they liked a lot. By then we’d sit our moms in chairs like this to watch the plays that we put on.
By the next summer the whole neighborhood was watching fireworks on lawn chairs and blankets in the huge backyard down by the river. Craig and I were trying to figure out who might star in our next community show.
That’s how small communities grow.
How does this align your ideas of how communities are and how they grow?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
It seems we’ve been trained in our consumeristic mentality, to think we can run into a Walmart and take a community off the shelf.
You can take a network of the shelf, but a network is not the solution for a community. It’s only the mechanism.
Engagement is in the doing. Others will be attracted to what is done well, lets call it: the gravitation of interest…
It all starts with that one friend, doesn’t it?
My first best friend and I were a little different when we were five. She and I bonded, and we lived in our own little world. We didn’t invite anyone else inside. In sixth grade when she left me, I was all alone, and I couldn’t remember how to invite someone new into my world (which was mostly made up anyway).
Now that I’m grown and have no social skillz 🙂 I’m learning on places like twitter, and from friends like you, how to do this whole community thing. My twitter started with one friend. So did my blog. But this time I left the door open and invited other kids inside. This way is much cooler.
P.S. How DO you say “Will you put on those wooden shoes by the door?” in Dutch? 🙂
This brought a few tears to my eyes – and made me reminisce of my own childhood.
It also made me wonder if I am doing harm to my own kidlet’s community building. The neighbor children are incorrigible. They’re children without manners or boundaries. The exact opposite of what we want to rub off on her. If it weren’t for the real estate issues, we would’ve moved long ago.
She has so many friends at school – but that seems not the same.
This post is making me wonder if I’m somehow robbing her of her own ability to build community in her own neighborhood.
Hm.
How you always make me think – even early on a Monday morning – well it’s amazing.
Aside from the non-parable aspect, the concept is also huge. How do we change the community around us? How do we build our own safe havens?
I should know better to read your stuff before I write my own! 🙂 You are amazing as always Liz!
Hi Richard,
It wasn’t community until we saw it as one and embraced all of the people who lived there and all of the spaces that were there to enjoy. It was something the year I realized I was buying my birthday presents so that “we” could play with them together.
Sharing the neighborhood had bcome a way of life.
Hi Amy,
C’mon on in any time. My mom said all the kids can use the back and go to the basement whenever she’s home and she always is.
As far as the Dutch goes … I’ll leave that to Karin H. When she gets here.
Lucretia,
One at a time — one act, one idea, one person, one seed, one flower — that’s how the world changes. Ghandi was one person with one idea. So was Mother Teresa. So are you and I.
Liz,
Brilliant, wonderful and heartwarming.
You’ve so completely clarified ‘community building’, as well. Thanks, and thanks again. Love it.
Truly inspired, I’m off to try to build, share. Awesome.
Cheers, Marc
Liz, this brought back so many lovely memories! My childhood was like this too – living on a lake and next to a woods, we had a fabulous playground. It shaped me – and I do wonder about kids now who don’t ever get to experience the power of play without gadgets. Thanks for taking me back!
And here you are today, forming communities, exploring the world and encouraging everyone else to play too.
You are more like the master gardener my friend… and I’m very happy to learn how you sow and till. It makes my own garden that much more lovely! 🙂
Very heartwarming and hits me in my core, about who I am, why it’s important for me to build community. I am forever being the proactive one in my community of friends. I plan the parties, instigate events and always invite everyone, no matter how many times they have turned down an invitation (some have for years.) You never know when an acquaintance will become a friend, or a friend will come back around from not being in touch for a few months or a year.
At my core, I am a community builder – and I think we all are. This aspect of life bleeds into business, networking and with our colleagues.
Life mirrors business, and what we do in our everyday lives affects what we do in our business world.
Great story and conversation starter.
Hm, I like those chairs…..and a front porch to stop by and say hi. I’m making gingerbread later, I’ll drop some around when it cools. 😉
All that free unstructured time we enjoyed in the neighborhood catching tadpoles, climbing trees, riding our bikes til dark… I think that makes us more likely to explore the possibilities virtually… things like building communities, sharing the neat stuff we find, sometimes giving a show for the hood, or playing together, maybe even working toward a united cause..For me it works one by one , then another, not huge and instant…..;-)
I’d have to agree with the sentiments of Richard – today it seems communities are built not around people, but a product.
Having relocated back to my hometown you story really hits home.
Rebuilding the community of my family has reminded me that the bonds we share start with the simple basics of communication. This grows and becomes something that I don’t think you can label or classify but you know its there.
Communities thrive on this undefinable quality and grow from it. I think once we label it we ruin the magic we created – its more our responsibility to nurture and cultivate.
If anyone has a word for this mystery entity – please share!
Hi Marc!
Welcome!
Communities have a way of forming themselves don’t they? They inspire us and we just give ourselves over to them.
Aw Karen,
People like to be with people who share their joy of living and appreciate their experiences. It’s not so hard when you look at their looking for.
Hi Charisse,
I think too about the kinds of communities our kids are finding, but they’re not so different really. The media has changed, but not the people. They still need someone to talk to. 🙂
Lucretia,
You inspire. You make flowers grow.
Hi Christian,
Great to see you here. It doesn’t surprise me that you build community that way. You reach out so naturally with what you do.
It’s good when life and business look the same to us. I think that means we’re being who we are.
Yeah, Janice,
That slow, long free time we had to figure out what to do … got us to pay attention to things other than us — to explore rather than be entertained. It’s a skill we need to pass on.
Dave.
Love.
Good answer Liz… good answer!
What a beautiful story, Liz. That was the way it was for me and my brothers and sisters growing up. By the time my boys were coming up (now ages 27 and 29), it had already changed.
The essentials are still applicable. Share.Be yourself. Have fun.