One of my deepest blessings in life came by accident.

    My mother met my father while playing in a football game at the age of eleven. She almost went to the movies that day but decided to play football instead. If she had gone to the movies, I wouldn’t be here.

    If a friend of mine hadn’t told me about a certain vacant apartment, then I would have moved somewhere else and wouldn’t have met my wife.

    If Paul Harvey Jr. and Dina Kinnan hadn’t fallen in love, I might never have had a book published.

    Some people get where they are through hard work and savvy. I rely on dumb luck and accidents of fate. Somewhere in the back of my head is the idea that God might occasionally stack the deck in my favor. There is too much blessing, too much coincidence for luck and fate to be the only factors at work in my life.

    “Coincidence,” says Madeleine L'Engle, “is God working anonymously.”

    The best luck I’ve had lately is moving next door to Libby Eddy. When we first looked at our house, the realtor gave us a computer printout detailing its virtues. It listed three fireplaces, a dining room, a living room, a basement, three and a half baths, four bedrooms, a two-car garage, and a cool breezeway for summer naps. But not one word about Libby Eddy. At the bottom of the page, where they name the extras, it read, “Stove, dishwasher and window treatments stay.” But no sentence saying, “Kind woman next door will love your family and dispense sound advice, but only when asked.” The best things about a house seldom get mentioned on the computer printout the realtor gives you.

    This is a new neighborhood of young families finding their way. Libby and her husband built their house in October 1955; thirty-five years later a developer built a horseshoe of houses around Libby. She is our center, our anchor, our resident sage. In every neighborhood I have lived, there has been one wise person whose life radiates good sense and solid virtue. We young people move in, flush with pride and full of ourselves, snickering at these old-fashioned people, but within a year we are knocking on their doors asking advice.

    Back when people didn’t move far from home, they turned to their parents and grandparents for counsel. Today, with families sprawled across the nation, there is no one to talk to and we make terrible decisions. How can we ask Grandma’s advice over a plate of cookies if Grandma’s a thousand miles away in her Florida condo? All that wisdom gone to waste. I blame every social ill on this sad fact of modern life.

    Libby Eddy is a retired horticulturist. We wander over to her house to ask what kind of trees we should plant and end up asking her counsel on matters of child rearing, investing, and who to hire to paint our house. She is a big believer in hard maples and blue spruces, in rearing children with clear expectations and much affection, in blue-chip stocks, and in Larry Hart, the painter.

    There is a man in our town who, ten years ago, sold his house and journeyed to California to meet a New Age guru and unlock the mysteries of the universe. He came back three months later, flat broke and none the wiser. Libby would have talked to him for free.

“Coincidence is God working anonymously.”

    I’ve known Libby Eddy since I was in the first grade and her son, Bill, invited me home to play after school. She was waiting for us with homemade cookies and iced tea, a service she often provides. I called her Mrs. Eddy then and when I first moved back, but after a few weeks she told me to call her Libby, so I do. My boys call her Miss Libby. I’ve told them they’d better-by-golly mind their manners around her.

    We’ve been holding our breath around here. In the past five years, Libby has been hit with two cancers. She won the first round, and when we recently moved in next to her she was dazed and reeling from her second go-round. I almost didn’t befriend her for fear her death was near and the loss would be too painful. But it’s impossible to live next door to Libby and not be her friend. Within a week she had me at her kitchen table eating cookies and drinking iced tea. She brewed it, squinted at me (she looks a bit like Katharine Hepburn), and asked, “Do you still drink your tea sweetened?”

    I write upstairs in my house, in the bedroom under the eaves. The window looks out on Libby’s house. We moved here in mid spring. I would watch Libby from the window as she tottered on her cane around her yard, weak from cancer and a broken bone. Her children, Bill and Kathy made her promise she wouldn’t work, but as soon as their truck cleared the driveway she’d climb on her mower and steer back and forth across the yard. Her one concession to the illness was allowing Larry and Merrily Nilles to carry the morning paper to her doorstep.

    Bill visited her at lunchtime. I work with my window open and could hear his truck coming down the road and turning in. He would climb from his truck, walk up the sidewalk, open her front door, and ask in a loud voice, “How are we feeling today?” He is a faithful son. When the cancer was at its worst, he was there most every day. Kathy phoned her in the evenings after work and came to visit on weekends. If I ever get cancer and my kids fuss over me like Libby’s children have, I’ll be grateful.

    By autumn, Libby was walking without her cane and was spreading mulch on her rose bushes. She walked over to visit one October afternoon. I was mowing, and Joan was playing ball with the boys in the side yard. I shut off the mower and walked over to where Libby was standing with my wife.

    “I’ve just come from my doctor,” she told us. “He says the cancer is gone. I’ve made it. I’ve survived.”

    We hugged her and beamed. Wonderful, glorious victory. The boys smiled. They didn’t quite understand the news but suspected it was good. I climbed back on my mower and glanced back at Libby and Joan, who were talking and laughing. Joan is very fond of Libby. Her mother lives two hours away and Libby is right across the street. Joan will bake an extra portion of food and carry it over to Libby’s; an excuse to sit in her living room and visit.

    Joan comes home and tells me, “I hope when I’m Libby’s age, I’m just like her.” I hope I’m around to see that. Libby’s husband isn’t. He died in 1993. I think of all the grief Libby has shouldered in five years’ time and marvel at her strength. But then strength doesn’t come through ease and comfort and smooth sailing.

    I’m planning to landscape my back yard. Libby told me about farmers down the road who stack fieldstone at the corners of their fields, free for the taking. She told me the best place to buy topsoil and shrubs and trees and when to plant them. “Try a black maple tree,” she said. “They’re a wonderful tree.” I went to the nursery and asked a young man, fresh from college, if they had any black maple trees. He laughed and said there was no such tree. An old man in bib overalls, a nursery worker standing nearby interrupted. “Oh, yes, there is. They’re a wonderful tree, but no one asks for them anymore. Where’d you learn about black maple trees?”

    I drew myself up and said that anyone who knows anything about trees knows about black maple trees. I looked at the young man as I spoke, the young whippersnapper.

    I intend to spend quite a few winter afternoons at Libby’s house planning out my landscaping. She has pictures and books and various other horticultural materials to show me. We’ve cleared our calendars and are going to work.

    I could have lived anywhere in the world. I had the good fortune to move next door to Libby Eddy. When I lie in bed at night, the light outside her barn spills through our window and bathes the room, light amidst the darkness.

    Jesus commands us to love our neighbors. Such an easy thing for me to do.

 

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From the book For Everything a Season, by Philip Gulley. © 1999 by Multnomah Pub., used by permission.

Title: "A Time to Love"
Author: Philip Gulley
Publication Date: July 11, 2002