Girl Scout Cookies and the Neighbors

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Due at Lunchtime

Every day that we live in this lovely house in this sweet neighborhood is a blessing. This morning, on our walk, a black van slowed down across the street and our neighbor Thea announced, "The Girl Scout cookies are in. We'll bring them over around lunch-time."

I don't eat refined sugar anymore -- not since understanding my allergy to it by 1990 -- but we bought a ton of boxes to be good neighbors. Pat'll probably bring most of them to the Soup Kitchen with her on Thursday.

This is the same neighbor who gave us surplus zucchini, basil and tomatoes from her garden last year, and who brought over a scratching-post that her family no longer needed since their cat died. The girls love it.

Around us, everyone's a good neighbor. We're fortunate. And it's a neighborhood full of families who are Chinese and Indian immigrants, biracial, black, white, older and younger. It's odd -- or not -- that when we lived in St. Charles, Illinois, everyone looked the same in our neighborhood and it was much less warm. Does everyone feel more like an ambassador of his or her people in this neighborhood, and so everyone tries harder to be kind? Or are we just randomly lucky?