Patch Blog: Community Spirit Beats Windstorms

I’ve written on this subject before for Patch, but when I see something good, I just have to share it with others.  After the winds have died down on Thursday morning, we woke up to assess the damages to our home.  We were quite lucky, because we only had debris.  Other folks weren’t so lucky,and for them, I’m sorry. I saw trees blocking streets, cars crushed under trees, and worst of all, NO POWER. 

Monrovia’s annual holiday parade was cancelled.  By the way did you see the tree at ? Schools were cancelled and that made the kids happy. Why should the kids back east get all the snow days? That was the negative part I’m writing about.

I now want to direct your attention to the positive.  I saw so much to be positive about and saw a real sense of community. We’ve lived on this block for 10 years now and there still aren’t neighbors we know. Sure you wave at each other, but do we know each other’s names?  Do we talk?  I saw my neighbors and actually talked to them because no doubt they were home due to the lack of power at their jobs. We were all out there going about cleaning our yards. We had two neighbors that had trees come down. One almost blocked the entire road.

Since our house didn’t have power, I decided to walk up and down the street to see if anyone needed any help. One of the six year old kids, Jacqueline, that lives on my block saw me and wanted to come along and help me walk Coco.  We stopped and talked to everyone outside. I introduced myself to people I’ve never spoken to other than say "Hi." We all talked and despite the inconvenience of cleaning up our mess, everyone was so friendly with smiles. A wave is generally good for me from my neighbors, but it was so nice to be able to communicate and see if we all were good.  We talked about the weather of course and how scary it was for us. I turned instantly into a 51 year old baby hiding under the covers, but I digress. 

What I came away with was that we all seemed to have the same sense of ‘WE’RE HERE IF YOU NEED ANYTHING. One neighbor who I just always wave to, came knocking on my door and asked me if I wanted a bag of avocados because they were all blown off her tree. I in turn had the same problems with lemons, so she took a bag of lemons. We formally introduced ourselves to each other and her name is Maria.  My other neighbor asked if I had any extra flashlights. I checked on my other neighbor with her two little girls and we shared cake.

This was just on my street. I am willing to bet that many have the same stories.  My friend Kristin Warren posted on Facebook that she talked to a neighbor for 15 minutes, who she rarely sees.

So yes, it may be bad for a lot of us, but it sometimes is worth it just to see the good in our neighbors. I for one am glad to live here, wind or no wind.