And The Light Shone Round About Them

We have children in the neighborhood.  There are two.  A boy around the age of 11 or 12 and a sweet little 10 year old girl.  This might not sound like a big deal to you but in the land of perpetual summer when children in the neighborhood usually references anyone under the age of 50, this is a major big deal.

The little girl makes my heart go pitty pat.  She is just the right size with a long blond pony tail and strands of gold that manage to escape their band and fall willy nilly into her eyes.   And glasses... did I mention the glasses?  It's like having Miss A living across the street.  Well not quite but you get my drift.  Everytime I see her I think of our sweet Allie.

In recent years our end of the street has been devoid of exterior Christmas lights.  I gave up the tradition after waging a losing battle of keeping the lights on and one by one everyone else seemed to follow suite.  But this year the elderly couple to our north are expecting their 8 year old granddaughter for the holidays and were under strict orders from their daugher to get it done.   They did.  A few days later the house with the children lit up with strings of lights twinkling from the eaves and carefully wrapped around the palms.



The Kid couldn't stand it.

I came home from shopping one afternoon to find him draping stand after strand over the shrubs along the front of the house.  Half of them didn't work so as one strand went out another came from the confines of the garage to replace it.  Eventually we had a continuous line of lights.

The next thing I noticed was the college student on the south side of us, home for Christmas break, standing on a ladder, staple gun in hand, a strand of lights trailing behind.  Eventually our dear friend's across the street said they could no longer live with the guilt and headed off to the nearest Lowes (because they had previously discarded all of their exterior lights).  Even the perpetually grumpy neighbor two doors down has a lighted wreath hanging from his front door.

Before we could say Santa Clause is coming to town our end of the street was lit up, like, well,  Christmas.

Now back to the Allie clone across the street.

I was outside walking Henna last night and she was out riding her bicycle.  She stopped to pet the dog and chat.  (She is a chatter.  Just like someone else I know and love.)  In the course of the conversation she was telling me in one continues breath how

"much of a dud the neighborhood had seemed because nobody decorated for Christmas not like her old home in Arkansas and then her dad put up some lights and then the next day like magic the whole street was all lit up and she guessed it wasn't so bad after all."

Whew.   She never slows down.

But it did make me smile to think how our neighborhood of bah humbugers had unwittingly come together and made Christmas a little brighter for a little girl in a new home and a new town.

May your days be Merry and Bright and your Christmas filled with Light.