Home foreclosure is always a sad thing.  I found out last week that a neighbor of ours will have their house foreclosed on in the next couple of weeks.  I remember when we first moved into our house four years ago, there was a for sale sign on the lawn across the street.  There seemed to be a family living there and we’d heard that the house had been gutted and completely remodeled following a fire the previous year.  Subsequently, we learned there was indeed a very large, multi-generational family who lived in the house.

Last winter during one of the post snowstorm shovel-outs, our snow blower crapped the bed.   It’s not that we have a tremendously large driveway or front walkway, but shoveling snow is a drag!  The city plow that finally came down the street and cold drizzle that fell on top of the snow, left a heavy and crusty mound of ice.  The bunker that separated our cars from the plowed street was about three feet wide and a foot high, and neither of us looked forward to moving it out of the way!

Steve and I bundled up with all of the appropriate hats, long johns, scarves, and gloves.  We each took a shovel and began to move the snow that was lighter and nearer to the house.  Then we worked on getting the car and truck cleared off, all the while knowing we’d eventually have to get to the end of the driveway.  As we focused on the heavy snow around our vehicles, we hardly noticed that two of the neighbors from the house across the street had started to chip away at the ice mountain at the end of the driveway.

We thanked them profusely and told them they didn’t need to do such a difficult job.  They kept going until our driveway was down to the pavement.  When the job was done, Steve exchanged pleasantries. They revealed to him that they often see us helping out our elderly neighbor and they thought we were nice, so, they wanted to pay it forward and help us out.

Over this past summer Steve shared some of our garden’s delights with them and in return got a lemon grass plant from them.  They seem a lovely family and I hope that everything turns out all right for them.  In the meantime, today’s thank you is for these nice neighbors who helped us gain our freedom after that snowstorm.

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