For World Gratitude Day, I could write about plenty of the strong women in my family and how much they shaped who I became. But for some reason, when I started thinking about a woman outside my family who had a real impact on my life, I kept coming back to Mrs. Hall. That’s not her real name, but everything else here is real.

Mrs. Hall lived across the street from us from the time I was in kindergarten all the way through high school. When you’re a kid, you don’t necessarily recognize the importance of somebody simply always being there. She wasn’t a teacher or relative. She wasn’t somebody who sat me down and gave me profound advice that changed the direction of my life. She was just this steady, kind, calming presence across the street for basically my entire childhood.

We had sundaes at her house. We exchanged Christmas gifts. We celebrated birthdays. I mowed her lawn every summer as I got older, and I don’t remember that ever really feeling like a job. It was just something I did for Mrs. Hall. When her dog died, we grieved with her because that dog had been part of our lives too. She was one of those neighbors who wasn’t really just a neighbor anymore. She was part of the extended definition of home.

And she occasionally covered my ass.

The best example was probably the epic party I threw when my parents went away. I was a senior in high school and, being a teenage genius, apparently decided their absence presented an opportunity that couldn’t possibly go wrong. Mrs. Hall knew exactly what was happening. Of course she fucking knew. She lived across the street and had known me since I was five.

She came over that night and didn’t shut the party down. Instead, she gave me the look and told me I’d better be responsible. Nobody was getting hurt, and absolutely nobody was driving home drunk. That was it. She trusted me to handle it, while making it very clear that she was watching and expected me to make good decisions.

The next morning I woke up to discover Mrs. Hall in our kitchen. My parents had given her an extra key years earlier, and there she was helping clean up the evidence of what had obviously been a much larger gathering than I’d intended my parents to know about. I’m pretty sure teenage me had never loved that woman more.

When my parents came home that evening, Mrs. Hall talked to my mom and reported that I’d been a good boy. I’d had “a few friends over,” she’d said, and everybody had gone home before dark.

Mrs. Hall, I hope you can hear me up there… thank you for that one!

But that’s the funny story, and it’s not really why I’ve been thinking about her. What mattered more was everything that wasn’t a story. She was there. Year after year, she was across that street. Her house was somewhere we were welcome. If Mom and Dad weren’t home and something happened, we knew Mrs. Hall was there. If we needed an adult, she was there. If we just wanted a sundae and somebody to talk to, she was there.

As a kid, I never stopped to think about what a gift that was. Kids shouldn’t have to think about it. You just feel safe, and you assume that’s how the world works.

As an adult, I know better.

So thank you, Mrs. Hall. Thank you for the sundaes, the Christmas presents, the birthdays, and all those summers of letting me destroy your lawn while I figured out how to mow the damn thing properly. Thank you for trusting me when I was old enough to need trust, watching out for me when I was young enough to still need watching, and occasionally knowing when a teenager needed an accomplice more than another parent.

Mostly, thank you for simply being across the street. I didn’t understand how important that was then.

I do now.