How to assimilate and make your mark in your new neighbourhood.

Storytime:

When I moved into my “grown up” home, I was by far the youngest person on the street. Every single other person was a granny, or a great aunt and they had all known each other for at least 20 years. I had barely been alive for 20 years…

We live in a really small town and there is one major employer in town. As old fashioned as it sounded, all these ladies where stay at home moms and their husbands all knew each other from work.

Me… I was not even a mother yet, my husband knew no one and I did not bake cookies. I wore black and swore, I drank red wine and listened to loud music.

They wore pastels and pearls, only ever said “whoopsie daisy” and lived demure watercolour lives. We were chalk and cheese!

A year or two later the pandemic struck. I was alone with a young son, my whole family was in another province, my husband being ESSENTIAL still went to work each day and I was lost.

Dough onto others

One day, as I was sitting in my front garden trying to keep my son from going loopy because he hadn’t seen another human in months. Auntie “A” popped her head over the fence and handed him a small plastic tub of home-made playdough.

The dough was still warm, which told me she had seen or heard us and decided to make him a batch of his own.

This kindness broke through the pandemic hardened shell of my life and suddenly I was all about the neighbourhood.

Within a month we had a vegetable exchange going, (all very Covid safe with remote drop offs and sanitizing stations). The street aunties even started leaving their garden gates open for me and my little man to go exploring their yards because we weren’t technically allowed on the street. In the end this street of fussy old ladies (who weren’t fussy after all) became my safe haven and saving grace during those dark months of 2020. I changed my mind about neighbours.

This is my cheat sheet for being a lekker neighbour:

Good fences make good neighbours.

Boundaries matter. Keep your pets, trash, traffic and children out of your neighbour’s home, garden and driveway. Simple as that.

Trim your trees, train your dog, teach your children.

Ask before you allow your guests to park on their sidewalk and give a simple heads-up if you plan on hosting an all-nighter.

ADWG!

Another! Damn! Whatsapp! Group!

Yes, they suck…but join the group to stay in the loop. However, this is not the space to air personal grievances, accuse or even self-promote or spam.

If the group is called: “Sunshine Street residents’ group” it is where Sunshine Street residents discuss matters of importance to the whole street on a public forum. It is not where one resident mindlessly spams everyone with a Good Morning message each day or where the neighbours at numbers 5 and 7 passive aggressively fight over the tree on their boundary line. Be a lekker human and keep it civil.

Count the cost before you fight.

If there are things that bother you, and you feel you need to bring it up – think through the consequences before sending the message – will you be able to solve the problem or are you just venting? If you need a place to vent, call a friend who isn’t a neighbour. If you need to solve a problem, go about it calmly, politely and without making unnecessary accusations or allegations.

Aim in the middle.

As awesome as my neighbourhood is, we have had our share of disappointments. Just as things opened up again after lockdown, we wanted to have a street braai, but that just never took off. The households all had such diverse schedules that we could never find a date to fit all of us (or even the majority!) …while this floored us for a bit, we bounced back. No – we have never had the Hallmark Movie Moment of a whole street coming together with paper plates and folding chairs, but we have had three festive seasons of joint Christmas light decorations. We have had three years of passing cookies over fences, knowing each other’s names, sharing plant cuttings, checking up and being neighbourly.

Aim too high and you’ll be disappointed, aim too low and you’ll never get off the ground. Aim in the middle and you might just hit a neighbour!

We have all had to drop some of our deFENCES and prune our prejudices.

Just because I don’t bake, and I wear black doesn’t mean I don’t make a brilliant commiseration-lasagna and just because Auntie “B” wears pastels and brings cookies doesn’t mean she can’t give you amazing investment advice and tell you what’s wrong with your car just by listening to it!