I decided to  create two separate blogs on a combination of kindnesses that came to my attention all in one day.  First, a friend/co-worker shared with the events of her morning sending her youngest child off to her first day of school.  Her daughter caught the bus just fine and my friend was getting ready to leave her home for work at our office downtown.  As she was preparing to leave for Nashville, she noticed a neighbor boy waiting outside of his home like he was looking for the schoolbus.  She decided to put her "mom" hat back on and pulled up her car to ask him if he was waiting for the bus.  When he replied, "yes," she let him know that he had missed it by about 5 minutes.  When she checked to see if his parents were home to bring him to school, he told her they weren't.  Well, again, she put on her "mom" hat and told him to hop in and she would bring him.   She shared with me that he was so obviously relieved to have help that was completely unexpected.  One of the things that makes this such a sweet act of kindess was that my friend had to drive another 5-10 miles out of way to get this child to school in the opposite direction from our work.   What would the rest of us do?  I can imagine myself in the same situation and I'm saddened to say that I don't know my neighbors well enough to help in this way.  Yes, we visit from time to time when we're conveniently outside at the same time doing yard work, but I don't know even their children's names.  In this day and age, if a child doesn't know someone, they obviously shouldn't get into a car with them.  So, simply not knowing more about my neighbor becomes a barrier to helping if they need it.  Is this by my choice?  Is this by theirs?  Are we so busy creating communities far from where we live, i.e. church, work, friend networks, etc., that we miss out on community at home?  When did we move away from knowing everyone who lived near us?  When we consider kindnesses towards our neighbors, I hope we're able to also consider how positively this will impact us down the road.