A Neighborly Day in this Beauty Wood*
Image by Patina Photography
In November 2018, I moved just thirty miles, from the woods outside one small northeastern Minnesota town into a neighboring smaller town. Sadness wafted from the cushions on my couch, lurked in the books on my shelves, tangled with the blankets on my bed. I’d sold the thirteen acres and log home my late husband, Mike, and I had built, where we raised our kids and welcomed so many friends and family. I called the land Rendre, meaning “to return home” and for thirty-four years it was home.
I sold Rendre for three reasons. Caring for my house and land was a lot for one person. An injury showed me that having neighbors nearby might be helpful, even life-saving. My mom was in a memory care home and I was her main support. Less land to care for would give me more time for her.
The second reason for selling was more compelling and joyful. My daughter was expecting my first grandchild. She and her husband wanted me to retire in the spring and provide daycare for them when her maternity leave ran out. Their home was a forty-minute drive from Rendre and only six minutes from Babbitt, my new hometown.
The wood floors of the new home gleamed gold and peach. And in the backyard, four clumps of cedars with wending boles and plump crowns provided a screen from the backdoor neighbors. Trouble was, I couldn’t see those lovely cedars from inside the house unless I was standing on a stepstool.
Except for the lack of a window into my backyard and its being in town, I liked my new home. The inspector assured me the previous owner had done a great job upgrading and insulating this little house. My favorite room was an oddly-shaped space, part of an addition on the back I claimed as a library/office. Still, it wasn’t Rendre. A streetlight shone all night into the house. My front window looked out into the picture windows of other houses. Neighbors were uncomfortably close and still strangers.
In northern Minnesota, November is a crappy month for meeting neighbors. Walking my old dog, Mantis, around the neighborhood helped. We met a backdoor neighbor as he deep-fried his Thanksgiving turkey in his driveway. A woman across the street stepped out every morning to exercise at the Community Center just when I was out walking Mantis before I took off for work. As snow fell, I met one man where our sidewalks converge. My yard has narrow strips of ground between my house and garage, between driveway and house, between the neighbors’ driveway and mine. Those neighbors and I gingerly piled snow between us. That first winter, snow just kept falling. Where to put it all?
In late January, my mom was placed in Hospice care within her memory care home. My four siblings came in rotating visits to say good-bye. In the midst of their visits, my daughter went into labor. In my excitement to get to Duluth (two hours away) to support Celin, I nearly took the door off my car backing out of the garage. My visiting sister, Sharon, offered to drive me. We churned through heavy fresh snow as we fish-tailed our way out of the driveway. Sharon left that day, but Celin’s labor lasted four days. We got a motel room connected to the hospital by a skywalk. She was turned away from the delivery floor five times that weekend. Later, we learned that the unit was full. They delivered as many babies in that weekend as they normally do in a month. Maybe a record-setting polar vortex had something to do with so many newborns popping into the world.
My first granddaughter’s arrival is a joyful story in itself, one for a different essay. The night of her birth, I stayed in a motel with my other two sisters. The next morning one sister was able to fly out, but the vortex brought snowstorms to the Midwest. My sister Yvonne’s flight was cancelled. We were in a coffee shop rearranging our plans when my phone rang twice. First it was a nurse gently telling me Mom was close to death. Yvonne and I immediately prepared to dash back north. The next call was from Celin. She’d been diagnosed with HELPP Syndrome (a severe form of preclampsia) and would be on a magnesium drip until the following day. She was hoping I’d come hang out with them in the hospital, but when she heard about her grandma, she urged me to go. My sister reached for my hand. “I just watched you move between Caretaker roles: daughter, mom, grandma.”
Yvonne went directly to the memory care home where she kept vigil with Mom until that evening when she had to drive back to Duluth for her flight out. I drove to my house to change clothes and gather mail. I parked on the street in front of my home, exhausted, elated about the baby’s arrival, worried about my daughter, and deeply sad about my mom. Dreading two hours of hard shoveling, I looked with bleary eyes to where I expected a berm of snow from the plows. Instead, the end was clear, the snowbank cut back neatly by a snowblower. I stumbled to the end of the driveway and stared in amazement. The entire driveway was clear. At the back, I found the steps shoveled and swept. Someone had braved windchills of sixty below zero to clear my driveway.
I cried then. Gratitude burbled through me. I opened the door carefully, hoping to find a note so I would know who to thank. No note. My next-door neighbor came out. She said she’d thought about clearing it for me, but someone else beat her to it. She didn’t know who, but listed a couple of suspects.
When I joined my sister at Mom’s bedside, kindness abounded there too. Hospice workers were stretched pretty thin just then. Maybe the vortex pulled people out of life as much as it pulled babies into it. However, the home’s staff treated Mom as good neighbors would, looking out for ways to make her comfortable.
My sister drove back to Duluth that night. The temperatures were still dangerously subzero. I thrust an old sleeping bag and some other winter survival gear at her. She was driving a rental, staying in a motel near the airport. I told her to give the stuff to the motel owners to re-use or donate as they saw fit.
The next day, I was torn. Sitting with my dying mother, but yearning to welcome my daughter, her husband, and our newborn as they came home from the hospital. Like a guardian angel, my friend Jennifer called me. Without warning or request from me, she was parked outside Mom’s place, asking to help. Jennifer took note of Mom’s needs and returned with her husband, to sit with Mom while I ran to deliver and share a meal with the new parents. And honestly, to hold my newborn granddaughter again. Mom died while Jennifer and Joel were with her. And so it was from a friend that I first heard Mom was gone. I was able to gather my tiny granddaughter to my heart while my daughter held me to hers before I went to say good-bye to my mother’s body. I believe Mom’s spirit was wrapped up with the three of us.
Mom passed away the day after I found my driveway cleared. She was released from ten years of Alzheimer’s indignities and I believe, found my dad waiting for her.
No one in my new neighborhood knew why I’d been gone that weekend. I had only a nodding acquaintance with a few of them, but suddenly every neighbor took on an aura of kindness. What had seemed a winter-bleak street, strangers peering at me from behind their curtains as I followed my old dog around the block, became instead a lane of homes, golden with lamplight, harboring kind souls. One neighbor lifted spirits with generous Christmas lights. Another blew up a waving Santa each dusk. At Lossings, the neighborhood hardware (and so much more) store, I bought a snowblower from Paula and Dave. Dave even delivered it to my house and gave me a demonstration on running it. With so much kindness coming my way, I looked for ways to pay it forward and noticed others doing the same. People righted each other’s rolling garbage cans, helped clear plow berms, kept an eye on each other’s homes, and on each other.
Since that first hard winter I’ve had other surprise driveway clearings from other neighbors. Although I’m pretty sure of who it was that cleared it that first time, he has never admitted it. I found kindness in abundance in other places, too. The librarians in our little public library welcomed me to town, pickleball players patiently taught me the game, city workers cleared not just streets but also trails through town so that my dog and I could meander as far as her old legs would carry her. People maintained ski trails, churches, and the community center. City employees kept a room full of exercise equipment available and community education staff opened the school pool for lap swimming, each for small fees.
Pickleball, the pool, and the exercise room closed during COVID. Our librarians offered curbside service. Neighbors kept their distance but still used their snowblowers, shovels, plows, and groomers to keep everyone safe but connected; to give everyone freedom to walk or ski or snowmobile.
The first COVID spring, local builders installed a big window in my favorite room. I notice my wild neighbors now like deer bedded under the cedar branches. I watched a coyote pass through once. Our brave winter birds, chickadees and finches, nuthatches and ravens perch on wires, branches, and snowbanks. When sunrise breaks through the cedars, rose-colored light slides across books and furniture. Sadness still wafts from a book or a memento, but the incense of love and kindness adds joy, too. Glimpses I catch of my neighbors are cast in colors of caring and warmth. Winter neighbors—beneath bulky layers beat big generous hearts.
Neighbors are the N in my Love With Roots gratitude list. What are you grateful for that starts with an N?
The title is a line from Mr. Rogers song “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
