On The 7th Day Of Christmas, My Neighbours Gave To Me

.....Caroling Way Off Key.....

When we first moved back to Vancouver half of our possessions went to Bismark North Dakota while the other half sat in a warehouse on the waterfront docks in West Oakland for a month or so.

So we decided to stay with our friend, and guardian angel, K.

At the time K. lived in a neighbourhood of old, dumpy rowhouses with wild, wide open yards.

It was a place where kids ran free and neighbours borrowed sugar, books, TV sets, washing machines, time, joys, and even sorrows, at the drop of a hat.

They also regularly pulled their picnic tables together for parties and celebrations of all kinds, rain or shine.

In other words, it was a small town oasis smack-dab-in-the-middle of the big city.

As a result, C. and I decided it was the place we wanted to raise our kids.

And for seven years we did.

Until the greedheads finally did us in.

Not that we didn't try our best to fight them, including putting together eight-figure financing and winning the local government, as well as the much tonier surrounding neighbourhoods, over to our side.

But in the end we lost for all kinds of reasons, including one that was purely provincial (ie. ideological).

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Anyway, the old neighbourhood is all gone now.

And in its place high-security condos and townhouses with postage stamp-sized, fenced-in, no-fun, no-roam-patio yards are being built to sit empty so that they can subsequently be flipped-out at $500 a square foot.

Which means that everybody that used to live there has scattered to the four winds.

Including K., who has landed the farthest away, in Vietnam, where she is a teacher.

Most of the others are dotted throughout the Lower Mainland.

And last night many of them, including K. who is home for the holidays, came to our new house in the near-Eastern Townships so that all the kids could once again run up and down the street, careen across lawns, leap onto porches, and bang on doors before stepping back to sing Christmas carols with the rest of us.

Now, it is important for you to understand that we actually sang very, very badly indeed.

And some of the songs, as Little e. pointed out to me later while she was brushing her teeth before bed, were pretty boring, especially 'the slow ones about God'.

But none of that mattered one little bit.

Because we all had a great time even though the wind was just starting to howl and the rain was plopping drops into our rapidly cooling hot chocolate.

And most of our new neighbours seemed to enjoy themselves too, including the lady down the street that disappeared for a moment and came back to her front door with a huge box of brandy-creme filled chocolates for all of us.

Which, I guess, is just another way of telling you that it sure is funny how a bad moving company and something that cost less than zero in the beginning can ultimately come to be something worth way, way more than anything money can ever possibly buy.

OK?


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The image above is from the old neighbourhood; a picnic table gathering in sunnier times.


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