On Tuesday, my mother gave a eulogy for Mrs. Smith, her neighbor of forty years. My father and I sat listening among many others from the neighbourhood my parents still live in. My mother has been reading my blogs and knew that I would be writing about neighbours  in memory of Mrs. Smith. Their friendship gave me lots to write about.

My mother and father moved into the twin house beside Mrs. Smith when the town was still small and they were outsiders.  Listening to my mother speak reminded me of another time. She spoke of welcoming people to the neighbourhood with baked goods and celebrating baby births with gifts.  And she spoke of being there through tougher times like the loss of Mrs. Smith’s only son when I was still a child and the loss of her husband when I was a young woman.

A lot happens in forty years. As a neighbour, Mrs. Smith watched us ride bikes in and occasionally off the side of my parent’s driveway that bordered on her carefully tended roses. From her kitchen window, she knew how much we delighted in snapping the snap dragons in her garden. It is entirely possible she knew some things we’d rather she didn’t, although she never spoke of them.

Much older than my parents, Mrs. Smith became one of my mother’s best friends.   She watched over my parents’ house when they were away and even when they were home. When she moved to a retirement home in a neighbouring community, my mother went to visit her and, as often as she could, she brought one of us along.

Watching my mother talk about the importance of neighbours, I was reminded of her mother, my granny. The neighbours my mother grew up with were also a part of my childhood.  My granny’s friends lined her street and were as frequent guests in her home as her grandchildren. My mom knew all about neighbours before she met Mrs. Smith.

It should be no surprise that my sister has absorbed these lessons. She walked next door just last week with a bottle of wine to welcome her new neighbours. And she lets others use her driveway when their children visit so that everyone has a place to park. She shares more than her middle name with our Granny.  Like generations in my family, she is a good neighbour.

It is more surprising that my brother and I have never stayed anywhere long enough to become a part of a neighbourhood. Even from across the country, my brother was sorry to hear that Mrs. Smith had died. The truth is that where we live matters, even if we think we are on our way somewhere else. For the time we spend somewhere, be it the four months of a semester or forty years of a lifetime, we are neighbours.

The time may be passed when this concept was in vogue. While cookie cutter subdivisions sell the idea of neighbourhood, we are often on our way elsewhere before we arrive, perpetually looking to upgrade. The quality of a neighbourhood cannot easily be quantified in a real estate listing because it is about the people not the properties.

Our world is changing, at once shrinking and expanding.  When my parents were growing up, they lived in neighbourhoods. Many of my friends are looking for such places to raise their own families, without always being able to identify what’s missing.

When we were growing up, people didn’t go as far a field looking for people with specialized interests to match their own. People didn’t have to travel across countries to find people they could relate to. And it wasn’t gauche or unsophisticated to realize that the people next door to you might have something to share by the simple virtue of living beside you.

As I go looking to expand my community through this project, I regularly ask myself what I am missing right in front of me. My friends and family tease me about whether or not they meet the criteria for my project and of course they do, despite being reluctant to have me tell their stories.

It is no accident that tonight I am having dinner with one of my parents’ neighbours. Nor is it a mistake that in broadening my horizons I keep returning home to the community I grew up in. It is no more or less perfect than the others I have lived in since, but it is a community and we do our best to support each other.  It is that support more than good fences that makes a neighbourhood.  And it is individual people like Mrs. Smith who make good neighbours simply by offering their friendship.