Won't you be my neighbor?

Last night after picking up Griffin and running an errand, I pulled into our driveway and saw that Patrick had shoveled the snow while I was gone. Ahh! What a wonderful feeling to drive into the garage without crunching over the snow and packing it down so that it's still there in March. We never have a completely clean driveway, so this made my day.

Once inside, Patrick and I are milling around the kitchen trying to stay out of each other's way while he makes coffee and I take some more cold medicine. He turned to me and said, "Thanks so much for shoveling the driveway." When I told him that I thought he had shoveled, we both looked at each other and began to wonder who actual shoveled it for us. We don't really know many of our neighbors. I know it's not the people across the street because they have three young boys and while the dad is really nice and friendly, he's got his own set of problems, including the fact that in the four years we've lived in this house, we've only ever seen his wife outside twice - she literally pulls into the garage and the door closes before she gets out. It's seriously like the Batmobile. I've spent many early mornings ironing in the spare bedroom just trying to catch a glimpse of her. But I digress. Our next door neighbors are nice, but we don't really chat. They've got a bunch of grandkids and I just don't see them as the "shovelers." The only other people we speak to are sort of our next door neighbors (on the other side). The husband is super OCD about his yard and anything related to landscaping, decorations, etc. The only problem is that he would have had to make a HUGE effort to walk over to shovel (they're not really next door to us - their backyard faces the right side of our house). I could see them doing it because they're so nice to us, but were they the ones? We'll never know.

It was a really nice surprise for me and Patrick, and a very kind gesture by one of our neighbors - kind of renews my faith that the world is filled with good people. Now we just need to find a way to do our own random act of kindness.