Living within spitting distance of a firehouse is not without its perks. 

Insurance companies tend to look kindly on the proximity, sometimes offering up discounts — albeit bite-sized ones. Then there’s the built-in magic making for young children who get to marvel at the firetrucks making their way through their neighborhood on drill nights. 

You learn, too, that you are never far from help on the nights, the mornings and the weekends when the world seems to go sideways. It’s a lesson I’ve come to know well after more than two decades of life up the street from the volunteer fire department. 

It could be 1 in the afternoon or 1 in the morning, when the siren springs to life, cutting through the quiet in town and whipping my dogs into a frenzy. It might be one of those blistering hot summer days when you’d swear the air’s so thick you can see it in front of you. It might be one of those early spring evenings when the cold rides with the rain, attacking the skin like hundreds of tiny needles. Neither the time nor the temperature will change what happens next. It’s like a promise being kept.

The blast of the tones will be replaced by the roar of engines as neighbors rush to take the call.

While we, their neighbors, throw a load of laundry in the washing machine, feed the cat, or settle on the couch with the TV remote, these volunteers are out the door, heading toward whatever the night has decided to bring.

These are my neighbors. They’re your neighbors. The guy who fixes your car. The woman whose kid plays soccer with your kid. The one you see every week at the gas station.

They chose the 2 a.m. calls, the interrupted holidays, the missed dinners and the moments they can't get back. They chose them for us. 

I've lived up the street from a firehouse long enough to stop noticing the siren the way I once did, long enough to let it blur into the background of a Tuesday. Then come the days when I catch myself watching the trucks roll out and remembering what it actually means. Somewhere, someone is having the worst moment of their life, and a handful of my neighbors decided, long before that moment arrived, that they would show up for it.

The insurance discount is nice. The magic on drill nights is real.

But this is the perk that costs something, and it’s been paid in full by people who never asked to be thanked.

I’m thankful for them every day.