After unexpected and shocking events, there is usually something good that happens as did for us this weekend. Last week, we were battling a fire that threatened to consume our home. Last week our neighbour was raising the alarm to get the firemen to save out home.
Last week we barely knew our neighbours. As we were so busy hustling and bustling to go about our daily lives, we had not found the time to reach out to each other. The fire has changed that. Two of our male neighbours were on the scene of the fire shortly after my husband arrived home. One called by his wife who had raised the alarm. The other by them.
Later that evening they both came by our home to check on us to make sure everything was okay. To ask if we needed anything. One neighbour concerned that we may not have a place to stay because the smoke and fire had been so bad when they had been at our home in the morning. Offering help if we needed it. All of us agreeing we needed to have each other’s contact details so we could get in touch without difficulty should be there another emergency. Strangers no more. Connected by a fire.
And then Saturday evening we were invited to our neighbour’s house, the one who raised the alarm, for drinks. We sat out on their porch with the other male neighbor who had come to check on us and his wife. The six of us drinking wine and chatting like we were long lost friends. Brought together by an event that could have changed all our lives. Fire.
As we sat and talked, our female neighbour telling us how the flames were so high she thought the whole neighbourhood was going to go up in flames. How she was panicking about getting the animals out, I realised we had all been brought together in this neighbourhood for a reason. The reason is to once again establish ourselves as a neighbourhood where the children can roam from house to house. Where all of us know someone has our back.
As I looked from face to face of our new neighbours while our children ran in and out, I felt like I had taken a step back in time to a place when neighbourhoods were neighbourhoods. When everyone knew what was going on. When there was no problem asking neighbours for help. And I knew why our female neighbour was the one who spotted the fire. It was because she was the one who was capable of connecting us all to each other. She was the one who was could bring us all together. And she did.
As I sat in the rocking chair of our neighbour’s home, the barriers coming down between us as we talked, I knew that fire was sent not to destroy but to connect. To open us up to become the neighbourhood we were meant to become. Our little cul de sac of four homes now truly a cul de sac of neighbours. Not strangers anymore. A place where we know regardless of what happens we will be there for each other.
And for the coming of the fire to burn down the walls of isolation of our neighbourhood and replace them with open space for us to become connected neighbours I am truly grateful.
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