I’ve known this for a few years now but events of the past few weeks have certainly proven it to be an absolute.  Chivalry is dead, buried and decomposed!  At sixty-eight years old, crippled with arthritis and barely getting around, I’ve found that the concern for one’s neighbors is certainly a thing of the past.

Before I became almost incapacitated, I was setting a post for my new mailbox.  Yes, setting the post.  I’ve lived in my home for twenty-three years and as a single mother learned to do everything that needed to be done by myself (at least in my younger days).  That aside, I was having quite a bit of trouble digging through the hard ground, ground that had never been spaded before in the almost eighty years of my home’s existence.  As I was struggling to handle the digging operation, stirring a bag of cement and trying to set the post, I noticed my next door neighbor arriving at his home.  He is several years younger than I and much more capable of handling such a small, minute job as setting a mailbox post.  I looked up as he exited his car and thinking “maybe he’ll come and give me a hand”.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  He threw up his hand and waved as he made his way into his house without a second thought.

My House, My Trees

More recently, I was working in my yard trying to remove some large limbs that had fallen from my one hundred year old oak trees.  Now keep in mind that I live on a busy street and there are never fewer than fifteen or twenty vehicles passing my house at any given moment.  My arms loaded with limbs, I turned to look behind me and tripped over a big log that I hadn’t noticed.  I fell flat on the ground and lay there for a few minutes just to gain my composure before trying to pick myself up from the ground.  I was in full view of the street and at least six vehicles.  When I looked at the faces of the drivers it was clear that they saw me on the ground.  Did anyone stop? Surprise, surprise, surprise, NO, not one soul stopped to see if I was dead or alive.

Now that we have all lived in close proximity of each other for decades, everyone knows that I have mobility problems.  Those trees I mentioned before dump millions of leaves in my yard in the fall and especially after a wind storm.  Knowing my limitations one might go out on a limb and assume that someone on this street would see that the leaves are just too much for me to handle anymore.  If this was years gone by, one could count on that, but today one might as well assume in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up quickest.  That was my Mother’s saying when I would ask for something I knew was out of the question, only I substituted “assume” with her quote “wish”.

I guess I feel a little neglected today.  Since my washer and dryer died, I have to wash by hand and hang out the clothes on a clothesline between the house and garage.  Today was wash day.  But after the wash was done, I knew I had to do something about those leaves.  So I pulled out the leaf blower and cleaned around the back of the house.  That probably doesn’t sound like much, but that was more than most people have to contend with in their entire yard.  Since about eight this morning, my neighbor has used his gas powered, back-pack blower to blow his entire yard and his $20,000 lawn mower to cut and mulch the lawn.  Not once did he offer to help and with his new fangled equipment it may have taken fifteen minutes at the most.

All this probably sounds like a grouchy old woman complaining about her neighbors and maybe so, but I remember a time when things were totally different!  I lived with my Grandmother most of my life and all the neighbors in our neighborhood were as helpful as could be.  As my Grandmother grew older, there was never a time when she had to struggle with her yard.  She loved to garden and her yard was a showplace.  But her neighbors always took up the slack when Mama’s tasks became too much for her.  Her children and grandchildren were always there to help and we never expected her to take a chance on injuring herself in the yard.

Until six months ago, I was climbing my ladder to paint, trimming hedges and working a pretty good sized vegetable garden.  Now I’m not sure I can even garden next spring.  I keep trying though.  I know that tonight when I lay down my head to go to sleep, I can count on waking up every time I turn over because of the work I did today and the inflammation it will cause in my ailing joints.  Tomorrow I will spend most of the day either lying down or sitting and reading because I used myself up today.  I’m just thankful that I could do what I did today and pray that I can at least garden a little next spring.  Without that I will be lost.

I just don’t know the world I’m living in any longer.  I think I will always be a “child” of the past.  A time when neighbors were neighborly, people cared for each other and older adults were valued.  From my view, that isn’t the world I’m living in today.  I pray I have been a loving child and grandchild to my elders and I can only dream of times gone by and long for them once again.

Peace,

Sandra