By Betty Miller Conway

The rain was coming down in sheets, and the windshield wipers were struggling as I turned out of the hospital parking lot and headed home. To be honest, I was struggling, too.  I had been keeping watch over my sick mother-in-law all day, and I was tired and worried. The heavy rain and wind, compliments of the remnants of hurricane Ida sweeping northwards across the North Carolina mountains, didn’t help any. But despite the rain, I stopped on the way home and picked up a few groceries—and a flashlight— for my 99-year-old aunt who lived alone and was anxious about the flash flood warning that was being broadcast over all the airways. 

I stayed longer than I meant to. She was happy to see me, and her house was warm and smelled of my childhood. My father’s oldest sister, she still lived in the house that my great grandfather built along the creek in 1899. Aunt Margaret knew all too much about floods and bad weather. She recalled the 1940 flood where she had seen a house with chickens on the front porch floating down the flooded pasture behind the old home place. The stories were compelling, along with the thunder of the rain on the old tin roof, so it was hard to leave.

Pine Orchard Creek was already bursting out of its banks when I finally headed home in the twilight. The winds turned the undersides of the leaves silver. I’ve driven on mountain roads all my life and usually do not think much about it. But this was an exceptionally bad night. Suddenly the road home seemed extra dark and winding as I steered around fallen tree branches and ponded up water on the road. I was comforted to remember that Walton had already put the horses and donkey safely in the barn before he took over for me at the hospital, but I was eager to get home and check on them and shut up the chickens for the night.

But just a mile and a half from home, I was thwarted by a big hickory that was down across Willett Miller Road. I got out and inspected the tree. Too much brush on the left side to attempt to drive around or push through, even with four-wheel drive. No way to drive under it on the right side. The trunk was too big and low to the ground even at the 60-degree angle from its fall across the bank above. There was no way around it and no other way home!  Such were the disadvantages of living at the end of a dead-end road in the country.

It was raining so hard that I could hardly see how to get back into the car. I looked up a bit anxiously wondering if any of the downed tree’s friends were also going to crash down across the road—or on top of my Subaru.  It was a lonely stretch of road with no houses in sight, only pasture and woods, and the occasional deer or turkey.  The nearest neighbors, Blanche and her son Kevin, were still ½ mile further up and around the curve.  I could not even see Blanche’s expansive garden from where I was.

All of a sudden, it all seemed like a bit much. My day with my mother-in-law had included an hour or so when she was distressed to the point that I genuinely worried that she was going to die on my watch, and that I would have to be the one to tell the other family members. Thank God, I didn’t have to deliver any bad news that night, but the feeling of dread remained. To make it worse, I was still recovering from surgery myself, and the pain and anti-nausea medicines were starting to wear off.  It was clearly a bad night to be stuck on the wrong side of a downed tree!  

I had limited cell service so couldn’t call for assistance, but I did send a couple of texts to Blanche and Kevin although I wasn’t sure they made it through. Then I just sat there, wondering if I should turn around and drive the ten miles back to my aunt’s house, go back to the Todd fire department and hope to find someone there who could help, or just wait a bit, hoping that my texts made it through and that help was on the way,  Certainly, getting out and walking the final couple of miles home in the wind and the rain did not seem like an attractive option!

But I did not have to wait long. In about ten minutes, the first set of headlights arrived. A few minutes later, another, then another. Word had gotten out. Kevin arrived first and before long, Bobby and Doug, who lived further up the road, joined in. And soon the sound of the chainsaws drowned out the sound of the rain. Those kind men got out in the pouring rain without raincoats or even their work boots and tackled that tree while I sat warm and dry in my car feeling a little sheepish that I wasn't making at least a token effort to help them.

They didn't know that earlier that day, I had been prepared to say goodbye to my mother-in-law, the only mother I had known for over twenty years.  They didn't realize that I was weakened by my own surgery and couldn't even pretend to drag a branch or two off the road. Certainly, they could not have known that Walton, who would have been eager to help chainsaw away the mess, was at his mother's bedside in a bare medical room, unable to even hear the wind and the rain.

For them it was simple matter:  a tree was across the road. They took care of it.

Once the tree debris was mostly cleared away, they waved me through.  I rolled down my window and leaned out into the rain as I drove past. There was a lot I wanted to say, but I kept it simple: “Thank you!”  Their response was simple too: “You’re welcome.” And then I could see their shadowy figures in my rearview mirror as they returned to their vehicles and drove away, their headlights fading as they returned to their own homes and driveways and families.

And I drove home too—slowly and carefully.  The dog greeted me joyfully and ran along with me as I checked on the animals at the barn and then made my way into the house. I called Aunt Margaret to confirm that she was safe. By then, the power was out, so I lit my grandmother’s old oil lamp and sat on the porch listening to the rain and the wind and feeling grateful.

I was thankful for neighbors on Willett Miller Road who are always there when needed. Neighbors who not only clear away trees from the road but also share fresh beans and corn from their gardens, come to your house to help put out a car on fire on New Year’s Day, help you look for your dog when it wanders off, and show you how to give your horse a shot of penicillin when the vet can’t come. The kind of neighbors who are understanding when your newly licensed 16-year-old daughter drives through their fence the first day she gets to drive to high school.

 And then I started thinking about how often I have been blessed with good neighbors, no matter where I’ve lived. I remember the Bertrams who were my next-door neighbors in Milton, Florida.  An elderly couple, they could hardly walk but nevertheless regularly delivered home baked chocolate chip cookies—and wide smiles—to my apartment door in the Piney Woods Apartment Complex.  I was a young teacher, homesick for my parents and the mountains of home.  I’m sure that they didn’t know that I cried after their visits sometimes. And then there was the Rodrigues family who came to my door in Corpus Christi Texas offering brisket and tortillas when we first moved in.  I won’t forget them, or the kind neighbors in Nova Scotia who delivered seafood “stew” on the coldest day of the winter, and helped put chains on our Toyota Camry from the south which had never had to traverse such cold, snowy roads before.

And certainly, I will never forget the unnamed middle-aged man who stopped in rush hour traffice along the busy interstate in Raleigh, North Carolina to help me change a flat tire as the cars roared by us at 75 miles per hour.  I had two tiny, worried daughters in the car and no words can express my gratitude when after helping me wrestle six lug nuts off a rusted wheel, he went back to his old Ford truck and returned with a box of Little Debbie Cakes which he preceded to offer to my daughters.  Turns out he was coming home from grocery shopping at the Winn Dixie that evening and saw my disabled car in the emergency lane.

Contrary to what the news headlines might suggest, neighborliness and kindness really know no names or even borders. I am forever grateful to strangers, people who I will never be able to thank in person but will always remember with humility: the young Argentinian cook who took time out to help Carolina when she was sick with a virus and wasn’t up to navigating a foreign medical system alone; the three ladies in a perfume shop in France who rushed to Olivia's aid when she felt faint; the young man on a train in Mongolia who took a handmade necklace from around his own neck and pressed it into Mary Ellis’s hand as a gesture of friendship just before she got off the train into a bleak, winter landscape.

Sometimes the world can seem cold and lonely. I’m grateful to all of these reminders that it’s not, really. To all of you, I say again, “Thank you.”