Within the same breathe as yesterday’s much more emotional post, I also have so much joy in my heart right now. I guess you really can’t have one without the other?
One of our main complaints about living in NYC (other than the whole stroller on the subway thing) was the lack of community. Now this is just our experience, and I know friends who have wonderful neighborhoods and awesome neighbors, but we didn’t and it really sucked. Here we are today in Ohio and feel what I can only describe is the complete opposite of that. We have only been here a little over one month and it’s like we’ve been placed into an area with extended family and wow…just wow.
For so long, I started to think that this old school neighborhood feel with a community built around actually getting to know people, making time for conversation, helping each other out, and so much more didn’t exist anymore. But it does. And you guys: we even have streetlights that come on when it gets dark and all.
Yesterday, I ran the local park that is a 5 minute walk from our home. I had both kids in tow, Branden on his bike and Blake in the jogging stroller. Branden rode ahead as we were coming home, texted me to say that his friend was out next door and went over to play. I eventually came along and Blake jumped out to join them. I met their babysitter (I know their mom but hadn’t met the babysitter yet), who happily told me to go take a shower and she would sit outside with all the kids. I almost cried.
This is day 4 in a row of the kids playing literally all day, running back and forth from house to house and my heart could literally burst with happiness. Yes, they ran through the house and were loud and drank all our juice boxes, but holy shit – our kids wouldn’t have experienced this in the city. In fact, this is exactly what we had in mind whenever we left the city. Looking back, it was such a huge risk that we took, packing up everything we knew to start over in a place we didn’t. But everyday we are reminded over and over again why we did that. And I could cry tears of joy about it.
Beyond just the kids, a few of our closer neighbors know that Chris is away for a few weeks for work and have been checking in on me. They even pull over whenever they see me out running just to see if there is anything that I need. And whenever they tell me to call or knock on their front door at any time of day if I need anything, I actually believe them. There are so many big hearts in this new neighborhood of ours and I’m so happy to be able to call this place home.
XOXO,
Allison
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