This sounds idyllic! Hope the living together part doesn't ruin it. Remember: good fences make good neighbors.

I lived in a side-by-side townhome duplex in college, with three of my girlfriends. We had never met the older boys next door, but they quickly became some of our closest friends. We did everything together-- cooked big family meals with them, hung out on the porch, watched movies etc. They always protected us like older brothers, and would often end up skipping parties or bar nights to stay home and hang out with us. I studied abroad with one of them and he was my saving grace/comfort when I was mugged. It was only one year of being neighbors, but almost seven years later, I'm headed to one of their weddings in a few weeks. I am so grateful for those friends, and for Craigslist for helping us all find our duplex.

first, may your continued friendship and the trip to paris bring joy to mari at a tough time in her life. will you please relay my sympathies for whatever losses she's going through? thank you.

also, i hope you both have great fun in france and travel safe!

unfortunately i don't really have any "great neighbor" stories to tell. my schedule makes it tough to meet people, let alone spend extended lengths of time with them to watch a movie or whatever. the neighbors i have met (where i live now) seem very nice. and i try to be a great neighbor, too.

kathy

When I was renting, I would say my landlord was my best neighbor. Easy going, let me do what I wanted within reason to the small cottage I had.
I went throught a tough time about 5-6 years ago. I had to take my youngest nephews in by court order due to my youngest sibling being just plain stupid and uncaring. (That's another story) Since I was living in a small 1 bedroom, I gave notice to get into a larger apt. He told me that since I had been with him so long, that I could stay and make it work. God Bless him. I converted the teeny garage into a bedroom and we did make it work.
He passed away but I will always remember his kindness.

When a tree randomly fell down in our yard an hour before we were having a huge outdoor party, our neighbor came over with his chainsaw and merrily cut up the entire tree, and helped us stack the wood and clean up the yard before our shindig. He was then a hit at the party itself — no surprise, he's a very personable guy. I'll always be grateful for his chainsaw and happy attitude.

That's sweet Lyon...

I live on the best street in Philly, all old tudor style rowhomes, and we for the most part know each other. So, it's not really one neighbor per se, but many. We always help each other and hang out together. I can't tell you how many times I had no plans on a weekend night and end up hanging out and drinking, chatting and eating with neighbors. It can be real nice. One man got a snow blower to clean the streets, for everyone to use! We also have some crazy people too, but being this close together, it really helps develop social skills. It's great.

This is why I hate the suburbs. My brother loves them, has a big house, but when I visit, often neighbors don't know each other and rarely are social. People tend to drive to their homes, go inside, and turn on the big screen. Blegh! My neighborhood is small, we are close, people walk, and it makes for a better social situation.

The last time I had a neighbor I could rely on was in the 1980s...in a SF apartment building, as it happens. I think something about being young and alone in the city makes people cleave together more easily. You look for family.

These days, I wouldn't mourn if my neighbors were abducted by aliens.

The neighborhood I grew up in as a kid was fantastic. The guys who lived next door to us had a wheeled fire pit and would put it on the curb and people would start pulling up chairs and bringing out food like homemade salsa and sushi rolls to share with everyone. There were always guitars passed around to adults and kids alike and Fleetwood Mac was sung. And once they got a projector it was all over. They would play movies for us kids by tying a sheet between two trees in the front yard. One year they gave us goody bags for Rocky Horror Picture Show and taught us all of the audience participation parts. It was amazing.

3 years ago, I shared the thinest walls ever made in a 1920's cute as a button bungalow duplex. Also shared an awkward doorway with what turned out to be the best neighbor in the world. Between midnight margarita's, bad sprinkler-yard party combo's and the naked guy across the street who thought no one could see him behind his slatted fence, we became best friends! I miss living on the other side of the wall with her but we're still great friends!

I met my neighbors the first time I looked at my house. When my boyfriend and I finally bought it our 87-year-old neighbors in the attached house next door expressed joy that we'd bought it--even though they'd only met us that one time. At our closing no one had the keys to the property; the lawyers and realtors told us to get the keys from the neighbors. They are really the best. They watch the house when we're gone, even watering our tomatoes. They've lived on the block forever and they know everyone and everything that goes on. On top of it all they're hilarious. We've had them over with other friends; they're the most gracious of houseguests and they are the life of the party. I couldn't have asked for better neighbors.

I’m grown up and have move out of my family home, but I am still friends with all my parents’ amazing neighbors. When my mom got cancer it was amazing to see how many flowers, how many meals, and how much support we got from all of them. I know that even though I don’t live there anymore I am always welcome, and if I ever needed anything they would help me out without hesitation. We housesit and babysit for each other, have a neighborhood book club, and even when neighbors move away they all come back for the Christmas party or 4th of July barbeque. We even had a couple of empty nesters move back into the neighborhood recently after selling their house and moving into a condo because they missed the neighborhood so much!
Say what you will about the suburbs, but I couldn’t live anywhere else. My family has been amazingly blessed to have such great neighbors.

First let me say...good luck to you and your neighbor. The both of you are blessed to be in each others' lives...

My Story. When my husband and I broke up, I moved about 15 minutes away from our home and bought my own. It's way smaller then what I am used to so I had to make the adjustment, emotionally and mentally. Any who, I remember when I moved in, I felt so all alone. Well, my next door neighbor saw me out side and from no where we struck up a conversation that lasted two hours and have been extremely close since. Well, she has moved and I miss her, but to my surprise, I have another set of neighbors that live onthe other side of me that are just was warm. I loved being sandwiched in between the best neighbors in the whole wide world..Dramatic I know...but they rock!

My neighborhood growing up seemed to come out of a feel-good sitcom in 80's-style. There were about 15(+) families that lived in our neighborhood, all with children around the same age. We all played outside together, went to the same school, did homework together.. basically grew up together in one extremely large, extremely extended family. Each summer we had a block party, with each house hosting a different event - swimming at one pool, bbq and volleyball/soccer at another, egg and water balloon tosses, drinks for the adults, and bonfires in the coldesaque at night. One nasty blizzard sent the entire neighborhood to one house because they still had a working fireplace. We all slept throughout the house, families co-mingled into whatever space was available on the floor. I liked to joke with the neighborhood mom's that I didn't have 1 Mom to catch me getting into trouble, I had 10. I'm 26 years old now and my Mom is selling the house to downsize a bit. Each time I come home to visit (I went to the city for college and never came back) I walk through the neighborhood and everybody greets me as if I'm family; as if me coming home is a small moment to celebrate. I couldn't have had a better people to grow up with.

See...I got so excited talking about them, I miss used words...Thank God for good people...LOL!

I loved my older downstairs neighbor in Chicago. She turned her butler's pantry into a Parisian cafe, strung with x-mas lights, she had a cafe table, pictures of Paris, fancy ice cream glasses, and a chalkboard where she'd write fake menus of the day on the wall. It seemed like the daydream of an 8 year old. She would invite me to her cafe and we would talk about her husband who was beginning to get Alzheimer's. She'd cook dinner and deliver it to us as a surprise. We'd get her food from Trader Joe's that she had never tried before and loved. We'd dig their car out of the snow. I'm a big Michael Jackson fan and when I asked if I was blasting my music too loudly, she confessed that she loved it and she would workout in her living room to my music whenever it was playing. What a doll! I miss her since moving.

My parents still live in the house I grew up in and the neighbors I grew up are still there as well. We consider each other extended family (in fact their sons and I call each other 'pseudo-siblings'). They've helped us with yard work, carpooling, babystitting, emergency room visits, and have celebrated Thanksgiving/Christmas Eve/graduations/etc with us for years. Several years ago one of the sons and I even tried to be roommates in college before he found out he was 'strongly encouraged' to live with some of his teammates. It was a huge bummer when we had to suspend our apartment search. I went home just last weekend and for the first time in ages all of us (parents and grown children) were home. So we had an impromptu beer and s'mores gathering over my family's fire pit and talked for hours. I hope someday to have a relationship half as good with my neighbors where ever I live, but I know its a rare thing now days.

We have the best neighbors & neighborhood ever. We party together a few times a year. We have all become activists in our town because of shared concerns about different local issues. We look after each other's houses and gardens and pets during long vacations. And there are many small kindnesses that are shared everyday - food for the sick or for returning travelers, a friendly chat during dark times, help with snow shoveling, garden produce shared, uni-purpose tools shared (my knife sharpener is a favorite) etc.

I sometimes think, if everyone would just try to be a good neighbor to the people around them, it would be a pretty much perfect world.

I completely agree with Dulcibella's last comment and I think it could work if we would try to be better neighbors online, too.

When we went to look at our current house, the fellow next door came over and introduced himself. He is the biggest reason we bought the house (a house we do love). He and his wife have been dream neighbors. We cannot possibly thank them enough for everything they've done for us in the last 4 years.

Hate, hate, hate all good stories about good neighbors. I have always been unlucky to live in places where nobody cared who lived next door. Nobody has ever done anything to welcome us, even though we would desperately try to welcome others. Just a month ago I moved to my new house, nobody in the neighborhood would even give me an eye contact. Another home sold on our street right after we moved in. As a nice gesture, I knocked at their door to gave them a box of pizza as I assumed they would be tired with moving. Somebody opened the door, took the pizza, said thank you and closed the door. Good neighbors, yeah those mythic creatures...

I used to live in this really great street in a multicultural neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium. My next door neighbour, fro Moroccan descent, once stopped me while I was driving away to the garage with a flat tyre, and changed it to the spare one in the middle of the street. Another neighbour/friend took my kids for a sleepover when I had to go to ER one evening late. Another neighbour (also a Moroccan family) helped move some furniture around when I came back from hospital so I could sleep downstairs. And so one. We had a street party twice a year (hosted in someone's house and everyone would bring drinks and something for the buffet). I remember conversations when some of us where drinking wine and a muslim woman talking about why she was wearing a veil AND sending her kids to Catholic school (they are known for excellent education in Belgium). And so on. I live in the (purely Belgian Flemish) countryside now, and people don't care too much here... Multicultural society really has it's added value I would say.

@Modern_Love, I have had similar bad luck. One neighbor actually came over right after we moved in, invited herself in, sat on my sofa, and proceeded to tell me how things "worked" in the neighborhood (i.e., her rules for the newbies). Another neighbor shot my dog. Another neighbor trashed my property. Another neighbor encouraged his kids to torment my dogs and deface the outside of my house (and then phoned animal control when the dogs his kids were abusing barked). Another neighbor....oh, it goes on and on. I do notice that most of these happy posts are memories of neighbors past. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose big time, when it comes to the people you live next to.

What a wonderful post. Hope it gives me the courage to reach out to my neighbors who seem like really sweet, wonderful girls!

What a great neighbor! Most of my neighbors are crack heads.

My childhood next-door-neighbor has been my best friend since we were babies... we're 47 now.

@ EdmundD - I'm with you about the city vs suburb life. For a while I lived in the Fishtown section of Philly and in the Italian Market section just around the corner from 9th & Washington. Lived off 15th & Spruce for a while, too. So I know what you're talking about when you said: "we also have some crazy people too, but being this close together, it really helps develop social skills." Not to mention learning how to develop "street smarts"! Those suburbanites who, like you said, "tend to drive to their homes, go inside, and turn on the big screen" really don't know what they're missing! Their whole life is dictated by the characters they see on "reality shows" Heck, I'd say, life in Philly IS a reality show! As far as the suburb life goes, I concur: "Blegh!"

I hope you trip to Paris will be a blast and that it will strengthen you friendship even more.
Sorry to hear Mari was going through a tough time this summer.
Please do post an update about how the trip went after your return!

Our current neighbors are pretty fantastic. In 2008 when Hurricane Ike came through Galveston/Houston on a Saturday, we were set to be married in Dallas the following Saturday. The night before the storm blew through, our neighbors hosted an "empty your freezer" party. We laid out a huge buffet, two of the neighbors fired up their grills/smokers and went to town cooking a bunch of food so it could be saved in coolers.

The kid next door had his 9th birthday that exact day, so we all sang happy birthday to him around a mix of different ice creams and a frozen pie that had been baked.

The next day, after the storm had passed and everyone was stuck cleaning up the debris, one guy walked up and down the street with his chainsaw, cutting up limbs. My husband helped our elderly neighbors rake and sweep. People ran cords across the street to each other, since some houses on the street had power and others didn't. At the end of the second day, we were all exhausted from working outside all day, so we staged a rebellion and 6 houses worth of people snuck into the neighborhood pool for a refreshing swim (it was closed for the season).

We made it to our wedding with blisters all over our hands and about 3 trashbags full of "stink" clothes from all the cleanup. When we came back from our honeymoon, our neighbors who were watching our house had collected our mail, wedding gifts that had been delivered, made sure all our heavy "hurricane" trash had been thrown out when the crews finally came through to pick things up, given us a gift themselves, and plugged our refrigerator back in so it was cold by the time we got back. Great neighbors, I tell ya!

Don't know how I missed this post.

I used to do those nice things too and made an effort with nice gestures, but I no longer do. People are not appreciative, so why bother. One of my neighbors is bi-polar and that created all kinds of issues with other neighbors who have since moved on. So, yes, I've had similar bad luck with neighbors and that is why I tend to avoid mine like the plague.

I echo the sentiments of rural and rueful, "These days, I wouldn't mourn if my neighbors were abducted by aliens."

Well said and same for me.