In the summer of 2015, I decided I was going to start making more of an effort to get to know my neighbors. I had met the fine folks who lived on either side of me in the six months since I bought my Sugar House home in Salt Lake City, but I hadn’t actually spoken with anyone else on my street.

One evening I was Facetiming my long-distance boyfriend (now husband, Skylar) and I told him about my new resolution. As I was explaining this to him, I peeked out the window and saw a woman 30 or so years my senior two houses down weeding a garden in her front yard.

I told Skylar I would call him back. I was going to head out and greet a new neighbor. After ending the call, I marched out my front door to make a barefooted trek to a woman in a sun hat who perked up when I said hello. She told me her name was Lynne. She was a flight attendant who was about to leave for an extended period. And she wondered if I could water her plants while she was away. Five minutes later, I found myself in the kitchen of her old gray house as she rummaged through a junk drawer looking for a spare key to her back door to give me.

In a matter of seconds, it seemed, my attempts to learn the names of my neighbors had turned into an exercise of blind trust.

Over the following months, Skylar moved into my home and befriended Lynne. Before long, the three of us began living in what started to feel something like a commune. We raided one another’s homes for kitchen supplies without bothering to ask first. We mowed one another’s lawns and shoveled snowy driveways when the other was out of town, without ever making a request or troubling ourselves with thank-yous. On Thanksgiving, while Lynne was in Florida visiting family, I took advantage of the extra kitchen at my disposal and put her oven to use as I prepared to host my parents and siblings for dinner.

Canning with a side of politics

Every summer and fall we combined our backyard harvests of peaches, tomatoes, onions — whatever we successfully grew that year — and camped out in one another’s kitchens, stuffing our steam canners with jars of sauces, jams and pickles. We’d wait for timers to buzz as we yelled at one another over politics and all the issues over which we ardently disagreed before Skylar would finally interject and change the subject, telling us both we were giving him a headache.

Lynne would roll her eyes at me when I placed campaign signs in my front yard for Democrats she found to be reckless. During some evening walks, as we passed her house, I would see the TV in her living room displaying a Fox News talking head, like Tucker Carlson. I would sometimes pound on her window and shout, “that’s rotting your brain, lady,” prompting her to peek out at me and shake her head.

She came to our wedding and met our families and cried happy tears for us.

“You know your political party doesn’t think our marriage should even be legal,” I informed her later.

“Oh,” she objected. “It’s not my political party. Obviously I think your marriage should be legal. I just don’t like how those Democrats spend all my money when they’re in office.”

I started citing data to dispute her claims.

“Stop it,” Skylar interrupted. “Both of you are giving me a headache again.”

We dropped the subject and went back to rearranging the art in her living room (she had called us over for homosexual assistance).

A few years ago, Skylar walked into the house, his eyes red and puffy.

“What happened?” I asked.

“She’s moving,” Skylar told me. “Lynne just said she’s moving.”

An hour later, Lynne walked through my front door carrying a small pot from her garden.

“Lady,” I yelled at her. “What the hell? You’re just going to up and move on us?”

Lynne explained she needed to relocate to be near her 90-year-old father to better care for him. Then she set the pot on my kitchen counter.

“Skylar hugged me and asked if he could have something from my garden so he’ll think of me every time he looks at it,” she said. Lynne began to cry, her face scrunched up, one hand lightly rubbing the top of the pot. “I know it’s not much but . . . well that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Meeting the new neighbors

Two weeks later Lynne called and asked me to rush over to her house. She was showing the new owners where to find the water shut-off and how to kick the old furnace when it’s acting up. She wanted to introduce us since we’d now be neighbors.

Standing in her basement with the homebuyers, an empty-nesting couple who had relocated to Utah to be near family, Lynne put her arm around my waist and leaned into me. Her eyes became misty as she told the couple, “Eli comes with the house — he’s a perk. A difficult but really lovely perk I’ll forever miss.”

The following Monday, Lynne set off for Florida. That was the last time we saw her.

That fall, I invited the new couple and their boxes of peaches from their backyard to can some jams in my kitchen. We don’t argue with these neighbors, primarily because we share essentially the same worldview. In many ways, that’s a much more peaceful community existence, and I can’t complain about that.

We recently took the dogs and our toddler for a walk and passed that old gray house. I saw through the living room window the TV was on, displaying an animated Rachel Maddow who, no doubt, was ranting about something with which I’d have ardently agreed.

It was nice — to not feel the impulse to argue or scold as we stepped past the exact spot where I had met Lynne a decade ago moments before she gave me a key to her house.

I shook my head and thought of that now-cracked pot sitting on our back patio and realized how effective it has been at getting us to think of Lynne every time we see it. Just then a frog showed up in my throat, and my lip quivered ever so slightly.

Cheers to the neighbors who see the world differently from us but manage to make us love them anyway.

Note to readers • Eli McCann is an attorney, writer and podcaster in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his husband, child and their two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs. His new book is “We’re Thankful for the Moisture: A Gay Guy’s Guide to Mormon Faith, Family, and Fruit Preservation.“