When you live in a smaller community, everybody watches out for everybody else, translated…
Thirty years ago, because we only had limited savings, our first house was located by the mountainside of Shijr, and we’d had to walk for about twenty minutes to get to the bus station, and we rode into Taipei, I’d needed to make another transfer, to get to my office. Although our home was located at a very inconvenience spot, but, it’s ours.
Later on, there is the shuttle service for our community, and although the frequency is quite low, but, it’d gotten us to the intersection of Songjiang Road and Nanking Road. The shuttle bus is right on time, it doesn’t wait for anybody, but, as work lets out, the neighbors would look around and check to see who isn’t here yet, and, none of us minded waiting for five to ten minutes, we’d always tried to wait until everybody’s onboard.
While I was pregnant the driver was especially kind to me, he’d given me his home phone number, that if I went into labor in the middle of the nights, and can call up a cab, no matter the time, he will be there.
And, my son really knew HOW to pick the time to get here, I’d realized that my water broke at four, or five in the morning, and, so, I can only call up the community shuttle driver for help, thanks for his lending me a helping hand, he’d gotten me to MacKay Memorial Hospital in Taipei where I’d delivered my son, and gladly, I’d not delayed his first shift of the community shuttle, taking my neighbors to work on time.
not my drawing…
There are so many stories in a small community, filled with compassion, kindness and love, I’m truly grateful for the people I’d met at our first place of residence, and I’d reminisce my local community’s kindness every single day.
So, this is, the benefit of living in a community that’s not too large, because everybody knows everybody, and, everybody watches out for everybody else, and, that, is how these smaller communities are more tightly knit, than those over twenty-story living spaces.