Jimmy and Mary

We've lived in our new house for a year now. I know because the NCAA basketball championships have come twice now. During the first sweet sixteen, I was measuring concrete floors to put in the hardwood. I watched the second one in the living room of a near complete renovation.

We have a great neighbor to the south, an Italian widower named Maria who is perhaps in her late 60s. She speaks broken (but nearly fixed) English with a strong Italian accent, and she calls me Jimmy- I've told her my real name, but she slips into calling me Jimmy anyway, and I think it's fine. I have another Italian friend in Clairemont name Jimmy. Maria calls my wife Mary even tho her name is Lynda.

Like all Italians (at least those who are 40 and older), Maria likes to give you lots of food. You hungry? Go to an Italian's house. If you leave an Italian's house hungry, it's your own fault.

I work from home, and Maria is almost always home. She brings me food at least once a week. Usually it's pasta or bread. She says her son gives her a lot of food (which she pronounces "fruit"), but no cat food, and the darn cat doesn't want to eat people food. The pasta is never al dente- as Michael Savage suggests, al dente may have been created by restauranteurs who want to save cooking time.

Mainly what Maria needs help with is her lawn. We live in East County San Diego, which means hickish and dry and hot, but we had one of the rainiest years since 1918 or so this year, so Maria had a backyard full of weeds and grass about 18 inches tall. She brought me pasta and asked me if I could help her with it.

I had been reading Imitation of Christ about being crucified with Christ- any suffering we do for good is like picking up our cross, being one with Christ in our suffering- so I went with gusto into her backyard jungle with my weed eater. An hour later, many weeds were dead, I was covered with green goop, and Maria was grateful.

Let me paraphrase James 1:27 - True religion is to visit orphans and widows in their trouble. I was thinking about that one, too. Isn't it funny? The woman who calls me Jimmy give me an opportunity to put James into action (and James is all about action).

She says Mary needs to eat more. Lynda tells her she does eat... Lynda needs Maria to alter her pants because she's changed weights again- Maria does amazing alterations very quickly, and probably would love to make some extra money doing more work, but doesn't want too much in case she gets sick and can't keep up.

Jesus said the essence of the commandments was to Love God and your Neighbor- of course neighbor means more than your geographic neighbor, but if you can't love the people next door, who can you love? Most people know how isolated we've become- from not locking our doors in the 1950s to not only locks and alarm systems, but frequently to complete anonymity even in the midst of a neighborhood. Fortunately, around here there are kids, and kids force a bridge by playing between houses. It's good for us to have to interact with our neighbors- we need practice loving strangers.