Embracing Diversity as a Family Blog #4: Chapter 2. Experience – 2000’s Colorado

After my marriage to Cary McMinn, for 20 years we lived in the east Denver neighborhood of Montclair. Though the residents were mostly white and middle class, there was a large age span diversity between the newer young families moving in and the retired senior citizens who had lived their entire adulthoods in the small brick bungalows. Several of the older couples were childless or lived far from their children and grandchildren. They enjoyed having our kids bring them home-made treats, pet-sit while they traveled, or provide lawn services and snow-shoveling in a time when children were still allowed and encouraged to hire themselves out for low wages doing manual labor at a young age. We greatly enjoyed that time in our lives getting to know an older generation of neighbors, since both our sets of parents — our children’s grandparents — lived out of state, and our finances were tight, limiting frequent visits to their homes in Kansas and New Mexico.

Additionally, there was more diversity in our local elementary school, both through ethnic and economic variation. We volunteered at that school where our oldest son attended kindergarten through sixth grade and our second-oldest son kindergarten through second grade. It was an active season of helping our community become more closely-knit.

When a local private pool became public, we pitched in with renovations and enjoyed our summer afternoons there. The private school associated with the pool had an even greater range of families from varying religious beliefs and socio-economic classes. Again, we were friendly to all and those kindnesses were returned.

Tragically, one of our children, our youngest baby daughter Abby, died very unexpectedly during that season of our lives….
[Chapter continues in the book.]

Here is the Amazon link for Embracing Diversity as a Family: Preparing the Next Generation to Flourish.