With our little one quickly reaching grade 1 (where did the last 4 years go?), we are going through the discussion that every parent in the city has had one time or another: “May be we should move into a ‘better’ school zone.”
Now, we haven’t actually decided to move yet, but when we are both working quite far from where we live right now, it seems to make sense. So yesterday in the car we casually brought up the subject with our little girl.
“Hey sweetie, what do you think of us moving into a different house?”
“NO!”
“But sweetie, you will get a different room, we will live closer to where you will go to school, may be there will be some nice parks nearby where you can play…”
“NOOOO! We are NOT going to move and I don’t want to talk about it again, OKAY??”
(By the way, that was an exact quote)
End of discussion.
We were a little puzzled, so we probed a little further. We asked if it was because she likes her room, or the backyard, or if she thinks we will leave all her toys behind…we assured her that she will have all those things even if we move to another house. Neither one of us expected what came out of her mouth next.
“Yeah, but we won’t be living beside Uncle Lou!”
Louie is our next door neighbor whose family have become quite good friends with us. They are immigrants from Europe from long ago (I always forget which country 
) . Louis is one of those guys who is always looking out for his friends and neighbors. He bought a snowblower this winter and I always see him helping others clean their driveways after he finishes his. In the Summer time, whichever one of us is out mowing the lawn, it’s understood that we will do each other’s front lawn while we are at it. When it’s nice out, Louie is always sitting on his front porch with a beer and when we pull up to our driveway, Taylor always makes it a point to go over to give “Uncle Lou” a hug before going into our own house. She has become quite a hit with our neighbors!
What struck us about the conversation was that while we thought she didn’t want to move because she was attached to “things”, the truth is that at this young age, she has learned to value her “community”. Something that as adults, we are prone to lose sight of.
It reminded me that as parents, it is all so easy to model a lifestyle that places the pursuit of success above everything else. Even in the church, it is so easy to forget something so simple and fundamental: people are important. People are more important than ideologies. People are more important than property. People are more important than institutions. People are more important than numbers and statistics. It still saddens me to think of the people who have been left behind and abandoned by the church in the name of progress, growth, politics, etc.
Meanwhile, in our own little situation of deciding whether to move or not, our little girl has just given us a whole new dimension to think about.
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