These are the people in your neighborhood

It was a beautiful New England fall day yesterday. Lots of folks were out and about in our neighborhood, and by the end of the day, I was reflecting on the riches living locally has brought to our life.

We started the day at shabbat services, a 20 minute walk from our place, where we reluctantly turned down a spontaneous lunch invitation from some friends, also walking distance from shul, because H and I had plans to have time together, just the two of us. After services, while we were out, H and I ran into a neighbor family we haven't seen in a little while and got to catch up a bit. Later that afternoon, after we were back home, a great friend of H's from daycare (the daycare that's about 5 blocks away) and her mom just dropped by to see if maybe H wanted to play. The neighbor whisked both kids off to the park while Angela and I finished getting ready for our outing that night. I then went to pick up H at the park, touched base with H's daycare friend and her dad, and ran into yet another family we know well and caught up with them a bit, letting them know if they wanted to hang out tomorrow they should touch base with Angela. H and I then walked along the bike path over to grandma's house in Davis square, running into two more families we know along the way, one family from the park, and one of Angela's co-workers and her daughter, who we know both from Angela's work, and from the fact that her daughter's daycare plays at the same park as our daughter's daycare, so our kids see each other several times a week. After dropping H off with her Grandma for their weekly sleepover (we know, we're spoiled), I waited in the square, listening to some great music for a few minutes while Angela got baby R settled with a sitter. When she caught up with me we hopped on the bus to a friend's wedding (which was delightful). This is a friend I met several years ago at grad school, and then we ended up on the same train home one day, and realized we lived in the same neighborhood.

Choosing to live with our work, daycare and religious community located right here in our neighborhood, choices we made because we didn't want to own a car, and choices that were not always easy to make, has provided such a rich sense of community. As we go about our days, we have so many opportunities to connect with friends from the many overlapping spheres of our life, simply by doing what we were going to do anyway. Some of the folks we ran into yesterday are close friends, the kind you really can call on in an emergency. Some are just friendly acquaintances. But even the less intimate connections, when they are so frequent, and so effortless to make, contribute to a deep sense of community and place. On our walk from the bus coming home from the wedding, I couldn't help but think that Mr. Rogers got it right.

Unforseen perks, and a small logistical problem

Last night a close friend of ours was celebrating his birthday. Now, this might not seem like a big deal, except for that this group of friends contains several families with very young kids, and the birthday boy really wanted an adults-only party, so there were many logistics involved.

We managed to rustle up a sitter even though we are out of practice (Angela's mom, our wonderful usual stand-in for such things, was out of town for work...The Horror...). We thought we had it all sealed up, but then the day before the event Angela found out that this particular sitter usually gets a ride home when our neighbors hire her. Hmmm. We feared the whole plan was in the toilet since we couldn't really trolley her home on one of our handlebars, and the bus from our neighborhood to her neighborhood doesn't run very often after rush. But it all turned out OK, because she is also a biker, and we were getting home early enough that she still felt comfortable riding home. Whew. I had never thought to worry about that one before, but now we know to make sure our sitters have their own transport...in whatever form. (Also, to be clear, we did convincingly offer to have one of us bike with her for safety, but she declined --also convincingly.)

The party itself was delightful in a way particular to parents who rarely get out in a group of grown-ups. You could sense the combination of slight confusion and excitement as we all bowled and ate delicious chocolate, at the lovely Sacco's Bowl Haven in Davis Square, without having to interrupt our games to shout "No! Don't run down the alley!" or "No! Don't drop the ball on your friend's head!"

As Angela and I walked home, I realized that, in a way, this lovely event was an unforeseen perk of our decision to live car-free. These are friends through our synagogue (OK, actually our chavurah, but think very small synagogue full of hippies with no rabbi and you'll get it), that we never would have joined had we not made the hard decision to leave our beloved old (suburban) synagogue in order to form a sustainable car-free life. Many members of our new(-ish) community walk to services on Shabbat, which means that we now have a wonderful crop of friends who live walking distance from us, by virtue of living walking distance from shul. For me, having such a lovely party right in our own neighborhood, with friends who live right in our own neighborhood made the evening even better.

(Also, anyone familiar with such things should pause for a moment to appreciate the deep irony that before we joined this congregation, the only day of the week that we ever drove was on Shabbat.)

Surprising Benefits from Being Car Free

One surprising benefit of being car free has been the reduction of choice in our lives. This might seem counter intuitive in a world in which more choices are assumed to make us happier. But making choices takes a lot of time and energy. If we hadn't been restricted geographically, we would have felt obliged to research 15 possible daycare centers; instead, we considered just the three that were walking distance from our home. That was a significant savings of time and effort, and it was a surprising relief not to feel obligated to provide our child with the absolute "best" of everything. We can easily provide her with "very good" using only resources that are close by.

But of course giving up choice is not always easy and it doesn't automatically make you happier. We have given up some things that were important to us in order to live without a car. For us, the most important thing we gave up was membership in a great religious community, which was located in Newton and not very accessible by public transportation. Before we had a child, we were able to manage membership, both due to the generosity of other members who lived in our neighborhood and offered us rides, and by using our Zipcar. However, once we added our daughter to the mix, it became prohibitive to carpool while getting a car seat in and out, and difficult to fit a 45 minute drive on both sides of an activity without messing up hard-won nap schedules. Any trip to our synagogue left us exhausted.

Though we were sad to leave our old synagogue, committing ourselves to being car free forced us to find the Jewish community in Cambridge and Somerville, which has many offerings that we hadn't even known about. We found and became members of Havurat Shalom, which is within walking distance of our home. Joining this community has come a host of unexpected benefits: we no longer drive on Shabbat, we have good friends within walking distance of our house, and we have convenient playmates for our daughter whose parents share our values.