While pondering my father's move to Utah...

When my parents first became my neighbors, we needed to establish boundaries. Our house is about 350 yards from theirs, so while we weren't too close, there were still kinks to work out.

Example: Saturday afternoon, both Michael's car and my car are in the driveway. We are...busy. Very busy. Busily busy with our busy-ness. Smack in the middle of getting down to our busy-ness. Dad knocks on the door. He sees the cars and knows we're home. And so he keeps knocking. And knocking. And still he knocks.

We've been busily ignoring the knocking, but Michael is now distracted and highly irritated about it. He throws back the covers and gets out of bed. "I have HAD IT with your DAD."

"Michael, where...what...you aren't really going to...oh! NO! NOOOO!...Michael! For the love of..."

Bare-naked, very recently busy Michael throws the front door wide open. "What can I do for you, Dad?"

(Silence. In the distance, a bird sings.)

"...Uh, I can come back later."

"Good. Great. That is GREAT. I will see you later."

Fast forward twelve years: Dad is moving back to Utah and we will no longer be neighbors. In less than thirty days, Michael and I can finally get back to uninterruptable busy-ness, and that's okay by me.