This week I am thrilled to share that the pallet deck is finished! It took about 2 weeks and many hours of manpower, but it is finally built, sealed, and ready to party. Observe:
I keep looking out at it and smiling. I'm just so pleased with the way my yard looks now! I can't wait to have friends over to help christen the deck, and I'm looking forward to hosting many parties this summer in our newly decked out space (pun intended).
The building process, as I mentioned last week, was a learning experience for everyone involved. Once the boards were all laid though, I have to say I got a little misty eyed when I looked out back this past weekend to see two neighbors and a close friend joking, laughing, and working alongside my husband to seal the deck and our patio furniture. I remember reading when I was a kid about barn raising, and how all the neighbors would come together to help one family build their new barn. It felt like that. These are the people we share a driveway with, and it was great to realize just how much we've built up our friendships with them since we moved into this place almost 2 years ago. I don't think in my adult life I've ever become friends with my neighbors. At best I've counted them as acquaintances, and at worst I've found them annoying or intrusive and done my best to avoid them. This small-town style community we've become a part of feels like such a rare treasure, especially in an area that's not actually a small town, and I'm so grateful we found this place and have made it our home.
Now, when I say we're friends with our neighbors, I don't mean we're BFF's with all of them, and I don't mean that we moved in and had instant friends the next day. I can't pinpoint exactly when the friendships began to blossom, but I know it was a process. The best thing I did, personally, was open myself up to the possibility of friendship with the people around me. I think of the two kinds of neighbors I mentioned above, I've become most accustomed to the latter, and therefore had a bad taste in my mouth for forging friendly relations with the people who were geographically closest to me (I mean, hey, if they're crazy and suddenly think you're friends, it's kinda hard to steer clear of them when they know where you live). I know I've had a reputation in this neighborhood for being rather anti-social. Actually, I still have a reputation for being somewhat of a party pooper, but I also have the youngest child in the neighborhood, so I'm not feeling real apologetic for asking people to be quiet when they're having a block party under the nursery window. (You know who you are. ;-) The point is, I created that reputation for myself, and then I had to challenge it myself. I had to decide I wasn't going to be anti-social, that I was going to assume my neighbors weren't obnoxious psychopaths and actually give us an opportunity to become not just pleasant acquaintances, but friends. Once I was willing to challenge the negative lessons of my past experiences, I found I had several friends waiting for me.
So challenging myself and my paradigms turned out to be a very good thing in this case. And now, I challenge you to challenge yourself. Reach out to a neighbor and just be open to possibility. See what happens. I'm not saying force a friendship with someone who doesn't want it, and if you get a bad vibe from the person you probably want to listen to your instinct. But if there's someone nearby you've been thinking seems like a decent human being, maybe strike up an actual conversation with them, you know, beyond the usual mindless BS about the weather and whatnot. Who knows? You may get a new friend out of the deal.
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