Being the Diversity

            My daughter had wisdom tooth surgery yesterday, so I’m at her house fetching ice packs and Tylenol.  She’s an easy patient, so I get to read and walk the dogs a lot.  Her neighborhood could hardly be more different than mine.  It’s urban, first of all, so the traffic never really sleeps.  Sirens at night and buses in the morning.  Trains and cars and trucks go by all day.  And diverse.  But what’s fun is that our kids add the diversity to this part of town.


            They’ve had three sweet years here, but her husband’s residency is wrapping up and they’ll move to Bloomington this summer, where she’ll manage her dad’s consulting business and he’ll be a pediatrician.  We’re over the moon about that, of course, but I think I’ll miss them being here.  I liked how their front porch was full of kids five minutes after they moved in.  I love how Margie and Donna, the mother-daughter duo next door who’ve lived there forty years, watch out for Mariah when Jeremy is working nights.  They also boss Jeremy around, making him unload their groceries and such, requests to which he joyfully complies.  It’s the very best of being neighbors.


            It’s springtime in the city just like at home.  Sunlight streams through every window and the dog sighs, deep asleep upon the rug.  I’m grateful to this one-hundred-year-old house that has watched over these newlyweds for this tiny era of its life.  I’m grateful to this neighbor-hood, which (as Margie says) has gone from sugar to salt and back to sugar in the last forty years, for welcoming my kids and being home to them.  I’m grateful to God for healthy kids and the fortune it has been to be witness to their growing up.  I’ve no words for what a precious life I have.  I pray the day is as kind to you.