Daily writing prompt

What food would you say is your specialty?

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I can eat all the food, don’t worry.

Oh, wait, are we talking about cooking? Mmmmm, yeah, so I don’t really cook. I mean, I try, don’t get me wrong, I try really hard. Especially at Thanksgiving. But you really never know what you’re going to get when I’m in the kitchen.

Over the last few years I’ve managed to perfect a homemade macaroni and cheese recipe that my family now claims isn’t any good. I can brine and rotisserie a turkey like nobody’s business. I make Libby’s pumpkin pies without crust so we don’t have to deal with gluten and I don’t have to try and make a gluten free crust that doesn’t burn or taste like cardboard. I make a dish of yams with oranges that is so decadent we sometimes have it at other times of the year to remind us we’re alive.

And for your average evening meal I make an InstaPot white chicken chili that no one wants to eat because it took so many trials to perfect it.

What I’m saying is, I’ll gladly hire someone to do our cooking for us as soon as I can afford to do so.

Daily writing prompt

What makes a good neighbor?

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Growing up in cities and suburbia, I never really knew my neighbors unless they had kids that went to school with me. There was no one to borrow a cup of sugar from or to sip lemonade on the porch with. And no one seemed upset by it.

It wasn’t until I bought my first house at 31 years old that I began to make an effort to know my neighbors. There was the elderly Scottish lady on one side of me who owned a Scotty dog, as though she had a sense of humor, which I would later find out she did not. There was the brilliant and retired woman a few doors down who chain-smoked some lesser known brand of cigarettes, Pall Mall maybe, drank Bud Light (and only Bud Light), and walked the entire neighborhood every day waving hello as she went and occasionally inviting me down to hers for a 5pm night cap.

That was it.

At 31 years old I knew two neighbors, and that for the first time in my life.

It wasn’t until I moved to a small town (1,500 people) in the mountains that I started knowing not just my neighbors but everybody. In a town that small everyone knows everyone in the space of a few months, a handful of library visits, a trip or two to the local watering hole.

I began to learn all about what it really means to live in a community. I volunteered with multiple organizations, swallowed my fear with a shot of whiskey and performed in the local melodrama to raise money for local scholarships, and co-created a garden tour to raise funds for the school garden.

It turns out that being in a community takes quite a bit more time than you’d think. It’s rarely about borrowing a cup of sugar and usually about giving up several nights a week to organize and strategize and make something magical happen.

I used to think being a good neighbor meant keeping the weeds and the music down, keeping the grass mowed and the garbage cans put away. And that’s certainly a fair part of it. Especially in the city and suburbs, there’s an art to being a visually good neighbor.

Now though, I think being a good neighbor is more about recognizing how we’re all connected, finding ways to help, doing what you can for the people around you so they can do for the people around them, and so on.

We talk a lot about paying it forward at the Drive Thru line, and while I’m a huge fan of that too (sprinkle kindness everywhere), I think there’s so much more to being a good neighbor. For me, being a good neighbor means offering your time (sometimes that’s all we have to offer). It means showing up to help pick the apples when they come ripe, lending an ear, and bringing a hot meal during a tough time.

It’s our time that we need to find a way to sprinkle everywhere.