Learning about Community

So, I learned a valuable lesson this evening...only I'm not quite sure what it is.

Adam was working late as he tends to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays when there was a knock at my door. It was the daughter of one of the people in my community named (shall we say...)Winny. Now, I have met Winny's father for all of 3 minutes, and all I know of Winny is that Ilya loves her (Ilya tends to love 11 year old girls). Winny confidently walks in and says, "My brother is going to Karate and I want you to watch me."

What an odd request. Did her father send her? Is she acting alone? I was so taken aback that I used my default response and said, "Sure!" Winny's face lit up and she called her father to tell him that she had found someone to watch her so that she didn't have to sit through her brothers boring Karate class. It took several minutes for her father to understand WHO exactly was going to be watching his child (I don't think he even knew my name, and about half way through the conversation they started referring to me as "the person renting Kibby's unit"). Awesome. It feels good to be loved.

About two minutes after she got off the phone with her dad, there was another knock at my door. This time it was Winny's best friend and fellow community member, (shall we say...)Sky. Sky and Winny made themselves at home. Rearranging my furniture to generally suit their needs (they were making Hawaii) and playing with Ilya.

I was both fascinated and appalled by the lack of pretense that these girls displayed. They had inturrupted me in the middle of dinner to invite themselves over, asked to be fed (even asked me to make them cookies - for the plane trip to Hawaii), made a mess of my home, then after an hour, left. I mean, how cool would it be if we all just did that? Asked for what we wanted. All the time. Regardless of all the manners we've been taught. What would our world be like if we didn't worry what people thought about us. If we did what we wanted and were true to ourselves, living in the moment. All day long.

Half way through the "playdate?" I was thinking that I needed to make sure that set up limits for the future, but by the end of the evening, I realized that I really enjoyed their presence. Ilya had a blast, and I think I learned something much more important than how to say "no".