The Neighborhood Sleepover

It began with a tragedy. A couple, both physicians, were raising two young children in a nice suburb in Rochester, New York. Then one night, the husband shot and killed his wife before killing himself. Their 11-year old and 12-year-old children ran screaming into the street.

Journalist Peter Lovenheim lived 8 or 9 houses away but hardly knew the family. What haunted him was that no one else in the neighborhood seemed to know them well either. Lovenheim began to look into the story.

On the day of the murder/suicide, the mother, fearing for their safety had tried repeatedly to call a close friend to see if she and her kids could spend the night. Her friend was out of town for the day. After school, the woman took her kids to the public library to do their homework to stay out of their house, but by 9 p.m., with no where else to go, she took them home and put them to bed.

Her husband had cancelled her cell phone service earlier that day and then disabled her car when she returned home. At that point, her best option would have been to seek out a safe haven with a neighbor, but despite the fact that the family lived in their home for 7 years, she apparently didn’t know anyone well enough to show up on someone’s doorstep. An hour later, the husband killed her and then himself. Their children moved away to live with grandparents, and the house was put up for sale. Yet the neighborhood seemed unaffected.

“Why is it,” Lovenheim wrote, “in an age of discount airlines, unlimited cell phone minutes and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don’t know the people who live next door?”

After thinking about what it takes to build a community for awhile, Lovenheim hit upon a rather odd idea: What if he, politely, began to invite himself over to his neighbors’ homes for a one-night sleepover? It was a way to really get to know people beyond what they did for a living and how many children they had. More than half of the neighbors he approached with the idea agreed to have him sleepover and then write about their lives in his book released in April, In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time.

Lovenheim’s daughter watched her Dad pack his overnight bag and head over to various neighbors’ homes for sleepovers and declared him nuts. My daughter Megan, would die of mortification if I attempted neighborhood sleepovers, but I happen to think Lovenheim’s onto something.

It’s hard work to know people well; to reach outside our reserve and reticence and get to know each other’s stories. Worse yet, knowledge might require us to get involved. In the course of Lovenheim’s sleepovers, he met a woman three doors away who was seriously struggling with breast cancer and in need of assistance. He began to think of ways the neighbors might be able to offer her their collective support.

I’ve been fortunate to live in two neighborhoods where people have intentionally reached out to one another. When my kids left on one of their first vacations with their Dad and his girlfriend, I was saying a teary goodbye in the driveway. My then next-door neighbor Allison came over to ask if I wanted to join her family for dinner. I was so relieved not to have to walk back into my silent and empty house.

Other neighbors down the street in my old neighborhood have a summer tradition of setting up an outdoor movie screen in their cul-de-sac and inviting the neighbors to come by with lawn chairs and snacks to watch family movies. Before they started the film, they helped us break-the-ice with neighbors we might not know as well by passing out “worksheets.” Find a neighbor who has the same number of kids as you do and have them sign this paper. Find someone who is traveling out of the United States this summer. And so on. It might be anathema for the introverts among us, but it always takes some effort to begin an acquaintance that could lead to comfortable, lasting friendships.

I was sad to leave my neighbors when I moved homes a year and a half ago. But Day Two in my new home, while I was messing around with the plumbing of a faulty toilet, the doorbell rang. My new next door neighbors had come over to introduce themselves and brought a dozen cupcakes as they had noticed my brood of children. If only I had unpacked my towels and had one in the bathroom! (“Hi! Let me shake your hand with my wet one. No worries, I’ve just been messing around with the toilet!” I’m sure I made a great first impression with them!)

My new neighbors had been having small dinner parties at each other’s homes, and I was soon invited into the fold. Three dinners at different homes so far and when we were all snowed in during an unusual Seattle snow storm last winter, most of my new neighbors in the cul-de-sac walked over to my house for a Christmas party. Getting to know our neighbors doesn’t require slumber parties or even dinner-party efforts. Last summer, spur-of-the moment, I stopped by Trader Joe’s for desserts on my way home from work and then called the neighbors to stop by my house for dessert and coffee after dinner.

I heard about a neighborhood in Columbus, OH where, for 7 years, they have hosted “Wednesdays on the Porch.” To date, 85 neighbors have invited neighbors to visit and munch on their front porches (doesn’t even require a clean house). Another neighborhood has a parade on New Year’s Day. No one watches because everyone has to be in the parade.

I’m curious to read about Lovenheim’s sleepover adventures. I guess I can’t help but wonder about a guy who would invite himself over to his neighbors for a sleepover and what his perspective is the morning after. Maybe after I finish the book, I’ll pull out my sleeping bag and think about which neighbors I want to know better.

Lavender Blues*

Sometimes I hear Martha Stewart talking to me in one ear.  I hear Robin Williams in the other.

Robin’s yelling, “Carpe Diem!”

Martha’s whispering insider-trading secrets to me. Or she’s reminding me that it’s time to clean and trim all holiday candlewicks to 1/4 inch lengths and individually wrap them (in silk bags?) for storage to ensure smokeless flames and longevity during future candlelight vigils.

(I suppose I should go see someone about these voices in my head, but I’m kinda enjoying the company.)

It’s easy to be derisive about Martha, but I need to come clean and admit that last year I signed up for a Pottery Barn decorating class. They emailed me about their free seminar on bedroom decorating tips, and so I politely R.S.V.P’d and brought my friend Debbie along.

There we were–more than 30 women–gathered around a fluffy, short-sheeted bed in the pre-opening hours of the store. The key to those lovely display beds? The bedding is doubled over to enhance the heaping highness of the comforters…but you can’t actually crawl into them unless you’re very small. Tinkerbell-sized.

Pottery Barn employees spent 20 minutes demonstrating proper bed-making techniques and debating with our assembled group whether military folds versus hospital-bed folds made for more perfect corners. I whispered to Debbie that I hoped no one ever came over to my home and flipped up my comforter to check out my bed-making skills. I must have been a poor geometry student, because  90-degree angles mean very little to me. Instead, a bed inspector would likely find my wadded-up pair of socks I kicked off in the middle of the night; Possibly some dust bunnies reproducing beneath my bed.

Here we are, four decades past the women’s movement of the ‘60s, and the Sisterhood was gathered to discuss–not women suffering under Taliban rule; not the plight of young girls in Thailand or Russia–but the various lavender-scented oils that could be added into each laundry load of sheets.

So that’s my confession. I signed up to spend a morning discussing thread count and Egyptian cotton and short-sheeted beds. I wondered what I was doing there the whole time.

I happen to appreciate beautifully packaged presents and lavish bows and lovely, graceful homes. And hey, someone can scent my sheets with lavender any day! But fast forward to the ebbing days of my life, and I suspect I might look back and wonder why I spent even 20 minutes contemplating hospital-bed corners. Tonight, though, sleep eludes me, and I am thinking about hospital beds…specifically, my thoughts are with my 97-year-old Grandpa who is occupying one.

He was admitted to the hospital a few days ago with severe pneumonia and other complications. Although he’s resting calmly this evening, one of his lungs is entirely collapsed, and the other is functioning at 20 percent capacity. His heart is tired from the years of life and the present effort to move blood and oxygen through his body now. We’re expecting him to pass from us sometime soon.**

On his 96th birthday last year, I wrote a bit about Grandpa with his strict adherence to the rules of English grammar and the application of his red editing pen on my vacation postcards. This weekend, so many other random memories of my Grandpa surfaced:

At least twice when I was young, Grandpa pulled his money out of one bank and opened a savings account in another to get me a stuffed toy: Crocker Bank’s Cocker Spaniel or Security Pacific’s circus animals. I remember delightedly showing my animals off to my dad (who promptly phoned Grandpa to lecture him about the losses he was incurring by moving his money around). Grandpa, famously frugal with his funds, seemed unperturbed by any losses. He just enjoyed watching me play with those stuffed toys.

I remember Grandpa stopping by the house a few days before my wedding to ask me how he and Grandma could help. I thought a moment and then realized that in the frenzy of preparations, I hadn’t purchased sawdust shavings for my hamster’s cage. I’d leave on my honeymoon, and Sebastian would be sitting in soiled sawdust! Grandpa climbed into his car and went in search of cage filler for my rodent.

Grandpa never won an Olympic medal or any trophies. He didn’t publish a best-selling novel. He didn’t distinguish himself by finding a cure for a dreaded disease. He never painted a masterpiece nor launched a multi-national, trillion-dollar company. Instead, he took the time to double-knot my shoelaces and button my sweaters.

My sister and I, sometimes our cousins too, had sleepovers at my grandparents’ house. Grandpa would fix us hot cocoa at bedtime and add blankets to our beds in case we were cold in the night. Grandpa called chocolates “chocs,” and made root beer floats with 7-Up. We had both treats in abundance when we were with Grandpa.

Maybe it’s the nature of being a grandparent and retired, but if Grandpa was parsimonious with money, he was generous with the time he lavished on his grandkids. He’d shuttle us to the library when our parents were too busy. He’d swim with us when we couldn’t swim alone and no other adult wanted to splash with us in the pool.

In the end, I can hardly name last night’s Grammy award winners in each category. I definitely can’t name award winners from previous years. But I vividly recall Grandpa helping me make hammocks for my stuffed animals on his backyard clotheslines.

The long rows of white sheets flapped in the breeze. Wooden clothespins held up our pillowcase hammocks. None of the laundry smelled of lavender. But when I remember Grandpa lifting me up to put my teddy bears to sleep in the pillowcases, the memories smell like love.

The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Financial Planner’s Daughter

When I was growing up, my father had an interesting method for getting my sister and me to read something he found interesting. In our bathroom, directly in front of the toilet, was a step stool/chair. He would leave articles and books (yes, I guess we were in there for a long time) on the step stool, and we would read them while we went about our business. It really was our seat of higher learning.

I’m not sure how that got started. Or why we ever thought the bathroom was a comfortable place to read. I don’t even remember Dad ever telling us that we were to read whatever he left there. But we did.

Dad no longer has access to my bathroom. He does have my email address though. So he routinely fills my in-box with jokes, advice, lectures, reminders, and anything he thinks I should be informed of these days. His most recent forwarded email was the old fable of, “The Ant and the Grasshopper” followed by its modern version. It goes like this:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well-fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

The Ant and the Grasshopper (A Modern Version)

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well-fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We Shall Overcome.” Then the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper. The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug-related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle (once prosperous and peaceful) neighborhood. The entire country collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful who you vote for in 2010.

These were the bedtime stories I heard growing up as the daughter of a Republican, pulled-myself-up-by-my-own-bootstraps certified financial planner. And I understand it. I really do. Study hard. Work hard. Save. Live on less than you make. Plan ahead. Practice delayed gratification. And, in fact, I hope I manage to convey these same values to my own children….but perhaps with a somewhat augmented perspective.

After nearly 17 years working in a Christian, poverty-focused charity, I have a different lens on the grasshopper and the ant fable.

For one thing, many “grasshoppers” don’t laugh and dance and play the summer away. Too many of them are born into dire circumstances that they will never be able to escape from regardless of how hard they work or try to get ahead. I have met bright, industrious children in countries around the world who are unable to afford the mandatory uniforms and fees to attend school. I know the stories of children who rise at dawn to spend their entire day at the garbage dump looking for recycled goods and items that can help them earn money for their family. I have seen very young girls (the age of my own daughters) who are sold by their own destitute families into prostitution in Thailand.

I’m not going to make excuses for the poor in our own country who may seem to squander opportunities and assistance. Nor will I get into a discussion of whether the responsibility lies with private individuals or governments. I just recognize the complexity of being born into poverty. The odds are seriously stacked against you if you are born to say, a low-income, uneducated, teenage single mom.

My father would say he landed in the United States with very little money and worked hard to be the person he is today. And he did. But it would be foolish to overlook the built-in advantages my father had even without hard cash to start his journey. He won the “birth lottery,” as the president of my organization would call it. He was born to parents with modest means who could provide a stable home life conducive to future success. He grew up with parents who placed a heavy emphasis on education and achievement. His father was a school teacher. His parents helped instill in him considerable so-called soft skills of determination, sociability, and a strong work ethic that would help launch his career. Dad had the good fortune of access to a democratic country with an economic system that gives people the opportunity to improve their financial standing. And he received a number of other opportunities that he was able to take advantage of. Others are not so fortunate.

Too many “ants” that I know believe they have earned all that is theirs and have a right to do with it as they please, never acknowledging two critical factors. First, everything we have is from God. Sure we may have worked hard to get an education. We might have worked and sacrificed to build a secure financial portfolio. But our brains, our health, our abilities and talents are all provided by God. We haven’t so much “earned” our right to prosperity as we’ve been incredibly lucky to have had the breaks and opportunities and bestowed birthrights to access riches.

Second, ant people tend to forget that God has not relinquished His ownership of His resources. My father will appreciate the analogy of humans as God’s money managers. He gives each of us talents and money to use on his behalf and asks us to invest these for Him to accomplish His purposes and mission. A good money manager would never presume to think the client’s money was his own. His job is to invest the client’s wealth in the things the client desires. The money manager is accountable to the client to demonstrate how the money was used to grow his kingdom. And Christ has been very clear in the Bible about where His priorities are: Care for the sick, the orphans and the widows. Loosen the chains of injustice. Show mercy. Walk humbly.

I cringe a bit when I hear people tell stories like the modern version of the ant and the grasshopper story. Not because they don’t ring true–we all know stories of people who don’t seem to “deserve” our help. They don’t work hard. They squander opportunities. They seem incapable of becoming “successful” as we would define it. I cringe because too often these stories are told as a way of letting us off the hook. “I’d give, but how do I know that this person/this organization is deserving?” Or, “I don’t mind helping those who help themselves.”

Absolutely. Check things out and be sure to give to credible charities and causes. We have limited time and talents and money, so I believe God wants us to be wise with how we invest these resources for him. But we need to be cautious of sharing stories about “undeserving people” as a way to sidestep a personal commitment to the poor.

I also wonder at the whole concept of only giving to those who deserve our help. While we were yet sinners, the Bible says, Christ came and died for us. Certainly we are all undeserving and yet Jesus gave his life for us anyway. When you think about it, there is this God in heaven who has all the riches of the universe and yet He asks us to give to and care for others. Makes me sort of suspect that perhaps the act of giving is for my benefit rather than because God needs my donation. People say God is the owner and giver of every good thing in life. I don’t think that’s there to make us say, “Hey God, you’re SO rich and powerful.” I rather believe that knowing who owns everything and is ultimately responsible for the world, frees us. It frees us much the way that living in an apartment used to be less work than being a home owner. It wasn’t up to me to fix everything!

And knowing that God is ultimately in control helps me loosen the grip that money can have in my life. Money gives people the illusion of power and status and control. We begin to rely on the things that money can attain for us rather than in the only One who can actually save us. In the end, I think God asks us to give because He longs for us to develop caring hearts, and He wants us to have the opportunity to experience what it’s like to be Him. We can extend grace–even to those who may not deserve it–and experience the joy and blessing that comes no other way.

A note of acknowledgement. My thoughts on this topic have been shaped by a number of writers/speakers through the years:

“Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger” by Ron Sider.

“A Hole in Our Gospel” by Rich Stearns.

Almost anything by Tony Campolo

The analogy of us as God’s money managers comes from Tim Keller’s sermon, “The Gospel and Your Wealth.”