The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: NEIGHBOR

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above. 

This month's prompts include: mail, moon, mouse, moving, museum, music, music lesson, name, necklace, neighbor, nightgown.


NEIGHBOR

The combination of my introversion and the fact that we moved a lot might explain why no faces/people pop immediately to mind upon hearing the word “neighbor.” I know we lived in neighborhoods on a couple of occasions... and even when we lived in rural areas, we weren't alone out there. But the only neighborly memory that comes to mind is one from Ft. Meade, FL. My sister and I, both in elementary school (1st and 3rd grades, I think), would walk several blocks to and from school. On our way home one day, one of us really needed to go to the bathroom, so we just knocked on someone's door and asked if we could use theirs. A kind elderly woman answered the door and welcomed us inside. We did what we had to do, said goodbye, and then carried on with the rest of the walk.

Now parent-me is horrified to remember this story! So many bad things could have happened! But they didn't. And I kind of love that we trusted the world enough that we were willing to knock on a stranger's door to ask for what we needed. I want the world to be that trustworthy. Note to any young readers: please do NOT go inside a stranger's house without a parent or other trusted grown-up!