By Catherine O'Neill

I sat on my porch recently feeling badly for myself.

My plan to ensure my personal financial future - to be mortgage free- had been thwarted by my neighborhood association's planning board. My home sits on a 3,400 square foot lot. I also own the lot next door that is 3,200 square feet. You know where this is going right?

But in their wisdom, the planning board roared with objection. One abutter took John's Kerry's position: he was for it, before he was against it, and because he was for it before he was against I spent a lot of money having plans drawn up and hiring a lawyer. A lofty endeavor for this Dorchester girl.

Anyway, an impressive summer campaign against me and my petition, with all the elements; message (didn't matter whether it was true or not), signature drive, and the taxpayer-funded lobbying of city and state officials, was launched.

When I entered the Zoning Board of Appeals and glanced around I was amazed all this artillery was there for me and my little 3,200 square feet. Shouldn't they be working on the real problems in our neighborhoods and in our city? I imagined this is how Harry Potter must feel against Death Eaters. My petition went down in flames but I left with an enormous treasure: the memory of my friends' voices of support.

So this night I sat sadly on my porch, put a dream on the shelf, and was feeling bad, until my phone rang. It was my friend, my neighbor, a woman I have known for a long time. She has lung cancer. When I saw her number come up on my caller ID, I paused for a selfish moment.

I know what she's planning for and it's not being mortgage free.

"What's up?" I cheerily mustered.

"I've had a bad week," she said.

Couldn't be as bad as mine, I thought.

My friend has always had a dream to go to Wimbledon. This June she sat in center court. After returning home she cashed in travelers checks to the tune of $2,000, and because of a particularly bad round of chemotherapy treatments hadn't gone to the bank with it. She earmarked the money for her live-in care, when the time comes; and only brought it to London in case of a sudden heath emergency, not what my money was earmarked for. She has tagged all her belongings with names of the people in her life she wants them to travel on with after she is gone; the only tags in my house are on new clothes I haven't got around to wearing.

She came home one day last week and someone, probably two people, had been there before her. They robbed her of everything she had worth robbing, including her earmarked $2,000. The thieves knew which one of her many drugs would be marketable, and left the ones that were not. They stole her chemotherapy medicine.

The detectives came and took fingerprints as she put back together her ransacked apartment. She began re-planning for the deficit in her home health care; when the time comes, different from the kind of planning I was doing living mortgage free.

'The best laid plans" get snuffed for all different reasons; but one thing that appears constant is the goodness in some people.

Later that night, at one of our porch parties, I retold the story to my neighbors, who have never met my friend. They asked, "How much do you want?"

The roar of their generosity deafened and ashamed me; that I was so busy thinking about what could have been my own comfortable future that someone else had to think that thought for me.

At the Savin Hill Variety, on Savin Hill Avenue (the best coffee in the neighborhood), at C.F. Donovan's (is there another place to get a meal?) and at McKenna's (how 'bout their breakfast?) there is a raffle for a two-night stay at Ocean Edge Resort in Brewster Massachusetts. It's ten dollars a chance, that means we need 200 of you to join our new association.

I don't know what God's plan is for me or you, but one thing I'd bet my house on: There is a woman in Dorchester who was recently violated by intruders and they might have robbed her of $2,000, her computer and her drugs, but if anyone will make her whole, it will be you.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the reason my friend called me that night. She was worried when she went for her chemotherapy the next day, because of the new strict enforcement of the street cleaning rules her car would be towed, and since I have a three thousand two hundred square foot empty lot, she was wondering if she could park her car at my house for the day. Hmmm, I thought, what a good idea; and it got me planning again.