How to be a villager: Just say “yes”

The block on 38th Ave SW was full of life when I was a kid. But it wasn’t like that because of luck. It was built from the ground up by people willing to create connection in real-time — and my parents were two of them.

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I was lucky enough to grow up on a friendly street, on the end of the block where most of the kids were, in the small-town closeness of West Seattle — a little island away from the big city, but still within its borders. My parents gave me a lot of things: a goofy sense of humor, an unhealthy obsession with Youtube videos, and the ability to transfer a drawing with tracing paper before I learned fractions. But one of the things I'm most proud to have inherited is their distinct ability to grow deep roots where they were planted.

They did seemingly simple neighborly things. My mom made friends with the folks next door. She tasked me with asking Brenda for an egg or Yolanda for oregano, set up playdates to the park wading pool, and brought us over to the Griswold's house to get our hair cut and styled in our favorite princess braids. My dad invited the neighbor kids to join our games of alley basketball and built a gate in the fence between our house and the one just south so my sister and her best friend next door could come and go freely. And when the boys from across the street showed up with super-soakers loaded in the middle of summer, instead of shooing them away, he'd say: "Livvy, quick! Grab the pots and turn on the hose! These suckers are going down!"

And they did some not so simple things. They held the young mom across the street as she sobbed on her oldest’s first day of kindergarten. They answered another couple's desperate prayer for rent money with an unlabelled envelope — the exact amount in cash — delivered secretly to their mailbox. And when my mom found out that one of our Safeway cashiers and her boyfriend had nowhere to go for Thanksgiving, she invited them to our dinner table.

Life was full on that street.

I still remember the smell of burgers grilling in the backyard, bare feet on grass, the exhilarated shrieks of the kids (most over 35) setting off fireworks in the street on the Fourth — followed by our block's annual pilgrimage to the beach to watch the big shows across the water. Summers were spent outside, making up games with the kids next door, pestering the across-the-street neighbors for cheese, and dreaming up backyard talent shows. That block gave me a set of childhood memories, and our family a set of relationships, we still enjoy today.

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My parents — and other connectors on our street — did one simple thing: they chose to engage. They could have ignored, isolated, or said no to every invitation. Instead they said yes, until a web of connection began to form across streets and fences and into backyards and dinner tables that became strong enough to hold people.

Not every neighbor wanted in. Some kept their curtains drawn; others brought conflict. There were plenty of family dramas that played out on that block too. But what mattered was that the web existed — that we knew we could knock on a door when we needed an egg, or a shoulder, and someone would answer.

Looking back now, I realize what that taught me: at any given moment, there are a million invitations to connect in our everyday lives. Whether your neighborhood is single family houses, one-bedroom apartments, trailers, or community garden plots, there are opportunities knocking at every moment to simply engage.

So when it comes to building your village, here is your first “how-to”: just say yes.

Notice the moments that offer connection - running out of butter, rubbing shoulders with a new neighbor in the laundry room, sharing an abundance of late summer zucchini - and choose to engage instead of turn away. Knock on your neighbor’s door for the butter, introduce yourself in the laundry room, gift the lady across the street with zucchini. You never know what can blossom. Because the reality is, most people are just as hungry for the opportunity to connect as you are, and together you could build a web of connection that supports you both.