"All Things Common Among" the Courtyard

A Family of Friends

I live with my husband and two kids in an 800 sq ft, two-bedroom townhouse on Stanford campus. It is adequate living, but nothing fancy. To illustrate, the bathroom door rams into the knees of anyone sitting on the toilet when it opens and is too warped to close all the way.

But our back door is a gateway to paradise: a spacious courtyard with two acres of green grass and tall trees, a large playground populated with sun-bleached toys left from generations of children, all surrounded by a dozen townhouses and a sturdy but friendly fence. This courtyard forms a sort of communal living space rare in the surrounding Bay Area, where gated properties and stranger danger create polite but persistent barriers. My mom tells me military bases and suburban cul-de-sacs often have the same feel, and I’m sure she’s right, but our courtyard still feels miraculous.

It is miraculous to see the wealth of a collective, especially in contrast to our modest individual quarters. We may not have AC, but when the temperatures climb into the 90s, someone will set up a sprinkler or a kiddie pool and then message the courtyard group chat inviting everyone over. Someone brings popsicles, someone brings beer for the adults and juice boxes for the kids, someone brings a picnic blanket or chairs to sit on. Sweat and laughter mingle—who knew surviving heat exhaustion could be this fun?

For me, the outdoors has something to do with the grace that weaves itself into community. There’s something about standing barefoot outside, watching the bluebirds chase each other while my baby sits in a clover patch eating the (very edible) flowers, that refreshes and opens my heart to connection. Sometimes I put my head to the ground to flip the world and see as if for the first time how vast the blue sky is. There is something powerful about being present in a space—or in the midst of a sound or sight—so shockingly beautiful it opens our souls to connection. 

The courtyard offers itself as a canvas for connection and exchange. Residents donate toys to the courtyard and kids play with them freely. We learn that all this abundance belongs to everyone. I’ve stopped buying any new toys, knowing our children have dozens of toys just outside our back door, thousands if you count the blades of grass and sticks and gopher holes they also play with. My kids learn that the world is theirs, and that it is also everybody else’s. They take home a toy from the courtyard, and then we bring it back. For his birthday, my son asked for new batteries to replace the ones in the broken toys outside, and then we spent the day unscrewing the neighborhood toys and replacing their batteries.

Adults share too: postpartum padsicles, used clothes, turned-out-not-to-be-kosher groceries, leftover kale before leaving on vacation. We borrow eggs, hand mixers, and cupcake pans before a party. We pool our Asian grocery orders to hit the free shipping minimum. We share recommendations for pediatricians, Christmas vacations, and tax filing services. We host all birthday parties as open-invitation events at the courtyard playground, always with stacks of Costco pizza for anyone who wants a slice.

Having grown up in the Church, I’m no stranger to a culture of reciprocal service. I’ve seen meal trains, moving parties, and grocery store gift cards slipped to a visiting teach-ee struggling to make ends meet. But courtyard living seems to amplify this: My neighbor fed me and my son dinner every Tuesday for a quarter while my husband had late night classes. I babysat and breastfed a 5-day-old baby while his mom was in the ICU for 2 nights. When our dishwasher broke, our neighbors told us to bring our dishes over to load in their dishwasher, and another neighbor brought his toolbox and spent the evening taking the machine apart piece by piece. Since we all live in such close proximity, we see each other’s struggles and step in where we can.

The courtyard has parented me into parenthood. It has given me a place where I can trust that I can make mistakes and things will be OK. It’s not that someone is there all the time, but someone is there every time I need it. I let my son bike around the courtyard, and when he crashed without me seeing, our neighbors walked him home—without any hint that it was an inconvenience or that I really should have been watching him more closely.

I have learned grace, not by being the best neighbor, but by being the best neighbor-ed. I have learned grace by receiving it. One night, our three-year-old woke up at 3 a.m. and screamed straight until 5 a.m. This was a week before our neighbor’s dissertation was due. And our walls are paper thin. My phone dinged at 4 a.m. with a message from her, and you can imagine the message I expected. But here is what it read: “Sending you two so much empathy and kindness! It sounds like it was a really rough morning with T. This is such a hard stage and I'm so impressed at the ability you two have to remain calm and patient!” She saw my hardship and my goodness where she could have seen inconvenience.

Each June, a wave of graduates moves away. They invite us over for goodbye BBQs, and I always think, how were we ever merely acquaintances? My three-year-old son said it best when he said out of the blue, "Mommers, I have to tell you something. I think strangers are just pretend. All there is, is friends." 

And it’s true. Everyone dear to us now was once unknown. My son runs out to the courtyard and plays with whomever is at the playground. He walks to their house and eats their watermelon and comes back to tell me their name and to ask if he can play with them again tomorrow. 

Learning how big and beautiful and shared the world is, I try to share myself and my family more—to open myself to receive the grace God has to offer me. During sacrament meeting, I no longer try to contain my children to our pew (except during the sacrament itself). I let my baby wander the aisles. She shares her Cheerios and steals applesauce pouches and sits on the lap of a childless man in our ward. I tell my son, we are Heavenly Father’s and Heavenly Mother’s children, so we are all family. We can trust our family to help take care of our baby. We can trust our family to take care of us.

And then, when I walk out the doors of the church and come home to our courtyard, I recall Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan. Christ answers the question, “Who is my neighbor?” essentially by saying, “the stranger who saves you.” I need my neighbors, and not just the ones who meet in the same church building. Zion extends beyond the baptismal font, beyond the church doors, and into our big, beautiful, shared world.

Lindsey Meservey is a biology PhD student and mom of two. She loves adventuring her corner of the world by bike, train, bus, and foot. 

Art by Bob Usoroh.