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A Family In Your Community

© Cindy Ovard

Events in the past few weeks lead me to write on the topic of children getting along with parents and parents getting along with neighbors and making a family community happen. Getting along with other's is important, be it your own children or someone else's children. When you are in a neighborhood it's always nice to get along with the neighbor next door and even the neighbor down the street. You never know when you are going to need your neighbor.

I love being able to go for my morning walk and cheerily smile and wave at the people I pass because I know them. This is the place I live. This is the place I let my children run and play. This is the place I smile and greet my other neighbors because; this is their neighborhood also.

My four-year-old son had gone out to play with his little friends that live just around the corner from our house. The mother of the family is my friend as well as my neighbor. I knew where my son was. About a half-hour went by and the mother of this family called me and said she was looking for her son and could I send him home. He was not at our house, I assumed he was at their home. We began to do a search of the boys. We checked all the backyards with swimming pools and could not find them. Another half-hour passed and we could still could not find the boys. We immediately called the police just to notify them of two missing children. They were sending a policeman out to check on it. We began going door to door and soon had the whole neighborhood looking for our two sons. We then noticed their two big wheels missing as well. We broadened our search to more than just a few blocks. Two four year olds on big wheels can get pretty far in half an hour. We were frantic in our search, but remained cool headed about it and soon had our entire subdivision questioning others and stopping motorists on the street. I got into my own car and headed over the elementary school that is nearby to see if by chance the boys had gone there. No luck. I passed a police officer and waved him down. I told him what was going on and he asked me who I was. I told him I was the mother of one of the boys. He calmly told me the boys had been found and were being taken back home by another cruiser. I drove back home and saw a police cruiser rounding the corner and in the back seat sat two little heads bobbing up and down excitedly saying they got to ride in a police car. They were excited by this event. The officer told us he found them a mile down the road at a home of an older gentleman. The man had heard his two dogs barking crazily in his front yard and went to investigate. He found two small boys he hadn't seen before riding big wheels. They looked too small to be out on their own without their mothers. Reminded me of the story "Are you my Mother?" He took the boys into his yard, closed the gate and went into his house to phone the police of his finding two small boys.

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