BEFORE

   I love where I live. It is so much more than the place I call home.  It's the place where my children's childhood home will always be.  Where I married my husband and where I sow seeds in my garden. It's where I wave to my neighbors, my family as they drive by and of course to my mail lady Tamika. It is the place I race back to after a long day.  So, when a photo of a huge mess that was dumped in a vacant lot was circulating in our neighborhood newsletter immediately I felt excited.  I wasn't unhappy to see this mess, I was inspired.  Inspired to be the very thing that I am to trying to encourage people to be thru my work at NeighborLink, A GOOD NEIGHBOR. Here is my opportunity to step outside of my yard and make a change in my own neighborhood.  

   My 1 year old Oliver and I loaded up the car with toys to entertain him and gloves and an Addison Agen CD to entertain me.  Four people stopped to ask questions like, "What are you doing this for?, Who made this mess?, You know you can't drop these toys off here, there is already a big enough mess."  One person even joined in and helped a bit while he was on his lunch break.  He was so inspired and wanted to start doing things like this with his 11 year old daughter.  He was so excited to hear about NeighborLink, where I work and decided this was going to be the platform he used to connect his daughter and himself to help his neighbors.  I continued to clean drenched in joy.  

    Here in North Highlands we were just gifted a new playground at Hamilton Park that my son absolutly loves, as well as a new splash pad!  This is our way of saying thank you to those who put the time, love, and effort into making that happen.  I don't know how 7 huge tv's, a couch, a bag of dog food, old clothes, broken glass, and a bunch of old rugs got scattered all over a vacant businesses property.  I don't know who is to blame.  I just knew that I could do it.  I knew this was more important than going to the zoo that day.  I know that strangers have stepped up to help me when I was on the verge of giving up.  I know that life can be unbearably hard sometimes. Maybe the people who were about to get fined for this mess were having a hard time?  Maybe this 45 minutes that I took out of my day is capable of inspiring 45 minutes out of other people's days.  

   After living in this Neighborhood for 6 years nothing has made me feel closer and more proud to be apart of my neighborhood than this.  Not swinging at the park, not pulling the kids in the wagon to the flower store, not becoming a member of the Neighborhood Association.  Nope.  Cleaning up a mess that wasn't my own is what gave me that feeling of belonging.  It was a gift to me. It made me feel like I was doing something bigger than me.  I was able to be the neighbor I would want to live alongside.  As a mother I would love to know that my children are living in a neighborhood where people show grace and kindness when life gets though.  I want them to feel at home in the place where my husband and I chose for them to grow.  I see so much kindness here in North Highlands. I am just trying to keep up with The Jones' as they say.  

AFTER