Being Good Neighbors

A few months ago, the couple next door moved into their new house--it's just on the other side of our driveway, which has kinda messed up the view from the garage, but what can you do? They are Indian--he manages the Days Inn here in town, and they own a couple of convenience stores nearby. They have two children; the eight-year old girl has taken a liking to W & J, but the three-year-old boy terrifies J, so that makes playtime (when they come over) a little bit of a challenge. Still, we're trying to be good neighbors, as are they--recently we were the recipients of some okra and eggplant from their garden.

On Friday, they come over and invite us to a "prayer" for their house--evidently some kind of Hindu ceremony meant to impart blessing on the abode. Well, we figured it would be a good idea to make an appearance, seeing as we live right next door and we sure weren't going anywhere else on Saturday. W was concerned that we might offend or do something wrong, but we decided to make the best of it. So we get dressed at about 3:00 and head over there. I lead Jonathan to the back yard, where there are lots of kids playing, and W goes to the front door and rings the doorbell. In the middle of their prayer. She gets directed to the side entrance, and creeps in only to find about 50 women sitting on the floor in the midst of the ceremony.

So, all of her concern about doing something wrong? Good to get it out of the way first thing!

After about an hour or so, they pass around some food, and the hostess thanks W for coming. W says, "oh, we're planning on sticking around," and the response is, "oh? okaaay." Which gave W the impression that there wasn't anything else for us to be doing so we needed to go on home (all this time I've been playing with J in the back yard, talking with some of the other kids). We had changed clothes, I was putting water on to boil for dinner, and who should we see but our neighbor, at the front door. "You didn't want to stay for some indian food?" Well, of course we did, but we were just a little confused about what exactly was going on. So, back on with the party clothes and back over for some awfully good food. A lot of the guests were bemused at the way we dug in, asking if we really liked it. I would have answered, but my mouth was full.