We bought a townhouse for our first home, just before we got married. One of my husband’s former co-workers lived in the complex and she introduced us to a few neighbours as soon as we moved into the complex. We became friends with 5 other units of families within a short while and started to live a life of community we had never experienced.
My kitchen window over looked the walkway close to a spoken boundary for one of my neighbours kids, so if I saw one zip by at full speed, I could yell out, “turn around, buddy!” as a gentle reminder. We were the couple with no kids, so we soon became the couple that could babysit on a whim. I would get a call Saturday afternoon with an ask, “Can you watch my kids for a few hours? We have company coming over and I need to clean the house.” Traditions were created as friendships started to grow in our townhouse complex. The women started to plan regular nights out with pedicure bookings and sometimes, some of the families would go eat out together if we could not find inspiration for cooking on a weeknight.
One of the years we had lived in the complex, we rented out an ice rink for my husband’s birthday. He wanted to have a pick-up hockey game on one side and a place to skate for the rest of us at the other end. It was during our local hockey team’s hot run in the playoffs and hockey was on everyone’s minds. I had it in my head somehow to hire the mascot from our city’s team for our ice time and he agreed as long as I understood that if an official playoff game was scheduled, he couldn’t commit. As scheduling allowed, Finn, our local team mascot, came and entertained our group with his shenanigans, and also with a stack of posters of beloved team player #7.
Our city was on fire with hockey and we ended up placing our player #7 posters on the outside of our doors in our townhouse complex, showing our team support. 5 other units of friends, of course, followed in kind, and I started knocking on other units asking if others wanted a poster from our stack of leftovers. I could have wrapped that year’s Christmas presents in them, I had so many. I would jokingly suggest that if player #7 was at all feeling discouraged or unloved, he should have just walked through our complex that month. It was quite a sight to see his face posted on so many doors.
As the housing market blew up and seasons of life started changing, all 6 of our unit- crew friends moved out. We moved to a house minutes away and others moved out of the city and even out of the country. These neighbours were amazing in so many ways, but I mostly treasure how much I learned about “living life together” almost accidentally, because it was so organic.