jesus lives in my neighborhood and it's taken me ten years to find him

Several inches of snow fell on Thursday. The next morning, while the rest of my family built a fort in the side yard, I hung around the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher, washing the previous night’s pans, checking email, baking bread and watching my neighbor out the window.

Sally is an odd bird. She lives two doors down, but from my kitchen window I have a clear view of her back porch. Her house was probably cute at one point. Now the front yard is a forest of dead trees, broken lawn ornaments, plastic chairs, faded silk flowers and cat carriers.

On days when we are out walking and Sally is sweeping the dirt and carpet-covered driveway, we stop and say hello. She saunters over and poses, Marilyn Monroe style, carefully brushing a loose grey wisp from her forehead and says, quite dramatically, “What a beautiful family.” We talk briefly about the weather and she usually tells us to wait a moment while she digs into the back of her PT Cruiser to find some kind of treat for my kids—cream-filled oatmeal cookies or a bag of very old Hershey bars.

Sadly to say, after ten years of living in our home, two doors down from Sally, that’s been about the extent of our interactions. We always take her cookies at Christmas and send a card, but sadly, I’ve never done much more. Sally is so unusual, so hard to figure out, I’ve never known if she’d want me to. Or, at least, that feels like a reasonable excuse.

So, yesterday morning, I watched her from my kitchen window, as I often do, tiptoeing around in the new-fallen snow, removing the umbrellas she had set up over her bushes. I imagine she puts the umbrellas out to keep the snow from falling on the evergreens, or perhaps to protect the miniature flags and magazine pictures she ties to their branches.

After a while, I poked my head out the door to be sure my kids weren’t getting too cold.

“Hey,” my husband called. “Guess who shoveled our front walk?”

Liam chimed in.

“Sally did it,” he said and then added, “That was really nice of her.”

I closed the door and inhaled the warm, yeasty scent of bread baking. I decided to take her a loaf.

I trudged through the snow and pushed open the gate on the two-foot-high chain link fence that runs across the middle of Sally’s driveway, picked my way through rusted folding chairs and many garbage cans that line the path to the backyard. Standing at the backdoor, I paused.

A thick chain and padlock hung on a plastic chair next to the storm door. Her means to assure no one broke in when she was out, I guessed. Big plastic bows and weathered silk roses were tied haphazardly around the little porch. A big pile of circulars, newspapers, rags and other garbage was piled in the corner.

This woman loves to decorate.

I took a breath and knocked. Nothing. I tried again. Her car was in the drive. I knew she was in there. On the fourth try, the peeling wooden door, heavily taped with pictures of the saints, slowly squeaked open.

“Oh,” Sally gasped when she saw it was me. Then she looked at the loaf I was holding and fluttered her eyes and seductively moved one hand to her hip and cocked it. Her clothes were filthy but she had put on fresh lipstick. Always a lady.

“Amy,” she said in her breathy, movie-star voice. “What a precious family. You’re so busy with those beautiful children. I can’t believe it.”

I wanted to say, “Really, Sally, you’re wrong. I do next to nothing for you. I watch you from my window and worry about you, but you are so foreign to me. I glance at your lawn whenever I walk by and wonder, how in the world did you become this, the woman who tends rotten trees, feeds and houses skunks and raccoons and finds faded plastic flowers worthy of planting? I feel like I can’t begin to know how to know you. And this frightens me.”

But I didn’t. Instead, I smiled and handed her the warm bread.

“Well, Amy,” she looked at me as if she had just planned the greatest heist in history and intended to make me her getaway driver.

She discretely pointed to a small drift of snow at the base of her garbage pile. A champagne bottle was sticking out of it.

“Oh, that will go well with the bread,” I ventured.

“Noooo,” she fluttered her lashes at me. “I put that there for the next person who comes to the door.”

I looked at the peeling foil on the top of the bottle and wondered how many years it had been out here.

She motioned to the bottle and I lifted it from the drift. Then Sally gingerly stepped her dirty stocking foot out onto the snowy porch, leaned toward me with her hand cupped around her mouth and whispered, “I have a whole stash of that.”

I thanked her and considered the implication. I think I had just been invited back.

“You’re a doll,” she sing-songed as I walk away.

Not really, I thought. But I’m learning. And suddenly, the most unlikely person is teaching me.

::

As a side note, I have been inspired lately my friend Margot Starbuck’s Monday Minute videos, which are simply short, beautiful lesson in how to love your neighbor. Check out her blog to watch them. And then check out her book, Small Things with Great Love: Adventures in Loving Your Neighbor. She’s a fun and sassy writer who has gotten me thinking about all the places Jesus is living in my neighborhood and how often I fail to see him. . . But I'm learning.

as if

:: to help plan our gardens


:: because the local Borders was closing


:: oh, how I love you, library


:: the ones I keep coming back to


:: only three book clubs


:: just a couple things I plan to make


:: for cuddling up with a first grader


:: inspiration for the book I'm going to write - yes, write! just as soon I get all these books read, of course. ;)

perspective

Last month my book club read What is the What by Dave Eggers. This incredible book, about one of the Lost Boys of Sudan who endured the most unthinkable atrocities before coming to America, still occupies my thoughts, particularly through the pettiness and misunderstandings that often seem to rule the day.

Surviving murderous rebels, an exterminating corrupt government, thousand-mile walks through the desert, starvation, lion attacks, refugee camps, massacre and every other type of horror, this Sudanese refugee ends up in Atlanta working at the reception desk of a health club. And this is one passage that really gets me:

A new woman enters the club, someone I have never seen. She is white, very large, exceedingly graceful. She looks startled to see me.

"Hello," she says. "Haven't see you before. What a wonderful smile you have."

I try to frown, to seem hard-hearted.

"I'm Sidra," she says. "I'm new. I've only been here twice before. I'm, you know, making some changes." She looks down at her girth shyly, and I immediately feel that I should say something. I want to make her feel better. I want her to feel blessed. To be here now, to be alive as she is, to have lived always in this country, Sidra, you are blessed.

We all have troubles. And most of the time they are nothing compared to what the rest of the world is suffering. We have no idea how lucky we are. Just to be here, alive, in this country, we are blessed. It is far too easy to forget. I'm thankful to Achek Deng for helping me remember.

speaking of books

This week I had the unique experience of telling my story to a group of women at my aunt's church. It was both an honor and something I felt incredibly unqualified for. Thank goodness God is a great distiller, and hopefully he sifted all the chaff from what I said so people walked away remembering something meaningful.

A question came up about what I've read that had an impact on me and, of course, I blanked. So, for the last day and a half I have been mulling over this question and here's what I've come up with. In addition to everything I've ever read by William Shakespeare, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Conner and C.S. Lewis, these are the books that have inspired, changed and never left me (in no particular order):

:: Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard
:: Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
:: Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner
:: Expecting Adam by Martha Beck
:: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
:: Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr
:: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
:: Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris
:: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
:: The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds
:: Walking on Water by Madeline L'Engle
:: Paula by Isabel Allende
:: Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
:: A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken
:: The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
:: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
:: A Room with a View by E.M. Forester

The list is heavy on recent titles because even after 36 hours of serious pondering, my memory is sorely lacking. What's on your list?

waiting for the day

From the time I fell deeply in love with books, I have eagerly awaited the day when I would be able to read the stories I loved to my own children. Over the last month, nightly chapter reading has begun and, unlike many other long-anticipated pleasures that end up being so much less exciting than I imagined, reading novels aloud to my son is everything I dreamed it would be. Dare I say, that half hour before bedtime has become my favorite time of the day.

It began a little shakily as we were recommended Little House in the Big Woods as a book to begin with, and to say Liam was fidgeting while we read would be a gross understatement. About two pages into chapter three, as Wilder was going on at great lengths about the intricacies of smoking meat, I stopped and asked Liam, who was standing on his head on the couch, "Do you like this?"

"Borrring," he said flatly.

I was a little dashed, although I had to agree. Not the book I thought it was.

Remembering The Littles vaguely from my childhood, I picked up one from this series next. A bit better. We made it through, at least, but still pretty uninspiring.

Lest I lose my willing listener altogether, I decided we needed a solid classic. A book beautifully written with a story to match. I chose Charlotte's Web. It's a hit; we both eagerly anticipate it every night. Even poor little catatonic pneumonia boy (as Liam has been these last few nights) has requested his chapter before crashing.

Books buoyed me as a child. They took me away from troubles and helped me imagine the beauty and happiness I couldn't find in my own surroundings. Mostly they helped me find adventure in a world that I could readily enter, any time - my mind.

Now I love hearing the words read aloud, making up voices for the characters, adding just the right amount of drama. I guess you could say I love the sound of my own voice. But it's so much more than that. Getting lost in the words on the page with a willing and eager traveling companion who rests his head on my shoulder and makes funny and insightful little comments - this is joy. I have waited nearly 30 years for this day. It is all I imagined it would be.

partial reading list

Some people are serial readers; they finish one book before they start another. That definitely does not describe me. Tonight I counted 15 books beside my bed that are in various stages of "being read," including just started, pick up from time to time, taking a break from, dip into randomly, very slowly finishing, may never finish, forcing myself to skim for a book group, will probably start over someday. Occasionally, I actually do finish a book and sometimes, very rarely, I read one book straight through, forsaking all others. A few of these "couldn't put it down" books in recent memory include The Kite Runner (a two-night read), Expecting Adam (downed on one airplane flight, crying all the way) and Peace Like a River. Here is my current partial reading list, in no particular order:

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (I thought this was going to be another read-straight-through book, but with about 50 pages left, I haven't been able to muster the courage to finish.)
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
Captivating by Staci Eldredge
Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr (poetry)
Winter Morning Walks by Ted Kooser (poetry)
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Writing to Change the World by Mary Pipher
For the Time Being by Annie Dillard (dipping in for the second time)
Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan
The Impossible Will Take a Little While (essays)
Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk
Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen (I started this book last night and I already know that it will be one of the rare books I read straight through.)

So what does this say about me? High intelligence? Poor attention span? Open minded? Scattered? I have come to terms with the fact that wrong or right, it's just the way I read! So, if there's a book in your pile you think I should add to mine, please let me know. The bigger the pile, the better.