Illustration by VectorMine/Getty
I’ve lived in Brookhaven since 2004, but I wasn’t really part of the community until my daughter, Greer, joined Ashford Park Elementary School in 2015. Ashford Park is a one-story, circa-1960s DeKalb County public school tucked into a leafy residential area. To accommodate its 700-plus students, it’s surrounded by trailers (which the staff wryly refers to as “cottages.”) It looks like a lot of other public schools. And maybe it is like a lot of other public schools. But to me, it’s much more.
I was not okay when I dropped Greer off for her first day of kindergarten. Not okay at all. I thought we were supposed to use the carpool line; I somehow missed the memo that kindergarten parents all walk their children into the classroom on day one. So, I pulled my car up, a mask of stoicism on my face, and bid my daughter farewell, trying not to cry as she got out of the back seat. Then I pulled around the corner and saw all the good kindergarten parents holding their kids’ hands, walking them in. It took everything in me not to park and run in behind them and start calling for my daughter, whom I pictured wandering the halls, utterly lost.
She rode the bus home that afternoon, and I waited at the stop, my chest whirring. I’ll never forget that big yellow bus showing up, the door creaking open, and my pint-sized daughter descending its stairs. On her face was a toothy smile. She’d had, she told me, the best day.
God bless that school.
I decided to jump in at Ashford Park Elementary. All the way in. I joined the school council and successfully pushed for the construction of a new school crossing. I organized cleanup days and chaperoned field trips to the zoo. I got to know the staff: Nurse Wedderburn, with her cornflower-blue eyes and calm demeanor; Mrs. K, who kept the library crisp and organized.
Over time, the houses I’d driven past for years turned into something else: The gray one with the large front porch became Hudson’s home, and the two-story stucco one was where Collins and Avery lived. Moms’ Nights Out led to book clubs and Bible studies and birthday trips and real friendships. One day at the grocery store, I realized I knew almost everyone I passed in the aisles.
When Covid hit, our school community mobilized as a tribe. We organized food drives for kids who depended on school lunches. We formed “pods” of families who rotated the responsibilities of chaperoning virtual school. At night, we’d sit on lawn chairs in someone’s driveway, crack open beers, and laugh at the absurdity of watching our kids do burpees in our living rooms during virtual PE.
Both my kids are teenagers now, and our Ashford Park days are over. But last week, I had dinner with a group of the moms I met during that time. We’re all still neighbors, still friends, still a community. It just took the school to bring us together.
I hope you enjoy this special Neighborhoods issue. In it, we really tried to focus on some of the fast-growing Atlanta areas where people do more than live—they bond. From Chamblee’s artsy enclave to the diverse suburbs of Johns Creek, these are places where people truly lay down roots. As I learned myself, an address doesn’t make you part of a community. Relationships do.
This article appears in our September 2026 issue.
