azapta.org

Walking through the neighborhood last weekend I stumbled across something I hadn’t seen in a long time, a girl who could not have been more than 5 was sitting at a chair and table at the sidewalk in front of her house with a  lemonade stand.

It wasn’t five cents anymore although I was willing to invest 50 just because she looked so excited to make a sale.   It was pink lemonade and a little bit too sweet, but I’m not writing to give a food review.  What really caught my attention was in this day and age when parents are completely freaked out about molesters and kidnappers, this little girl was sitting – apparently alone- in front of her house, engaging strangers in conversation.   It’s not something that you see very often these days.  It crossed my mind that her parents must be mad to let her do this and then I looked around.

Mom was outside, she was around the side of the house with an uninterrupted view although our junior entrepreneur couldn’t see her.  There was a teenage boy sitting on a chair on the other side of the house, watching.  A neighbor across the street was on her front porch, apparently doing nothing, but as I turned I could see that she was watching me like a hawk.  And an older woman working in her garden next door had a clear field of view.  And every one of them was keeping an eye on this little girl while she started to develop her own sense of independence and self reliance.

I never realized that I lived in such a great neighborhood.