A small adventure

Last week, I met a new friend, only now I don't know how to reach out to her.

LC (the toddler who is growing up much too fast) and I were walking home from big sister's volleyball game yesterday when we spied an elderly resident trying to push a full grocery buggy up the curb. The wheels were caught on the irregular pavement.  I helped her pull her cart up onto the sidewalk. She was grateful, but refused any further help and carried on down the sidewalk very, very slowly with her heavy load, after she assured me that pushing cartfulls of groceries a mile was her way of maintaining health and vigor in her eighties, the proof being that she had not been to the doctor in thirty years.

So LC and I continued home, but I couldn't stop thinking about her. I had noticed an address sticker, the kind that comes free in the mail from organizations that want a donation, on the handle of her cart, so I put walking shoes on LC and the two of us walked to her house a few blocks away from ours and found her just unlocking her gate.

For a brief moment, I hesitated at the corner.  Dare I step into the life of another person? Should I leave her to her independence, or just pretend I happened to pass by? Do I turn away from engagement with another human being or do I involve myself in someone else's story?

I finally turned the corner and called out some platitude about making it home safely. Although at first my neighbor again asserted her independence, she seemed delighted to see us, and finally accepted our help unloading her full load of groceries, almost entirely bottles of Ensure and cranberry juice, out of the cart onto her front step.  The step was not to a door she used, though, so she was going to have to carry them, practically bottle by bottle to the house. I offered to carry them to the kitchen for her, but she declined my help. Then she launched into a long story about how she had built the house herself after her husband died and her contractors ran away with $80,000. First she told me about applying the stucco, then about digging six foot holes for concrete reinforcement for the fence posts, themselves reinforced with one inch rebar.  Next she told me about building her bedroom. "Do you want to see it?"

An invitation was offered that felt rude to refuse, and she wanted to give us some dried fruit from her many trees. Noting some fig trees, I was tempted. (little did I realize the fruit was so old as to be practically mummified.) So we followed her in.  When she locked the gate behind us, I felt a little like I was stepping into a Hansel and Gretel story.

The inside of her house felt even more like a haunted house. Dark and musty. Boxes and stacks of books and magazines everywhere. Ancient furnishings. Odd statues and tschotskes, some pretty, some not so pretty, things from a tourist kiosk or a grandchild's gift.

She did not seem embarrassed by the clutter. She might be called a hoarder, because the kitchen counter was covered by recycled plastic yogurt cups, reused plastic bags, plastic lids, and paper towels drying to be used again. On the floor in front of all the cupboards were stacked boxes of Ensure, several more of which had just been purchased.

Her hands were young and strong looking. Maybe she did build the house and lay the tile and smooth the stucco.  She showed me the stairs she built and the bathroom she tiled and the floors she laid. She showed me pictures she brought from Europe and pictures of her only son. He always went to private school because she knew what was in public schools - sex and drugs. She told me how her mother just died at 104 in the Netherlands and that she had had 18 children.  She said she had a daughter, but she thinks her husband killed it as an infant when she was sleeping. She gave me a bag of dried fruit and told me about her dehydrator, but I am guessing it was dried out years ago. She told me how she loved to read history and how she loved gardening and leaned out her upstairs windows to pick the fruit. A tour of her backyard led me to guess that she hadn't harvested fruit for a year or two because the trees looked thirsty and withered, long past bearing. She told me she wanted to sell her house for 2.5 million dollars and move to Fatima because she had such a feeling of God's presence and peace when she visited there, as opposed to Lourdes.  This was the day before the 100th anniversary of Fatima.

I finally had to go home to make dinner, and she walked me halfway back to my house. I asked her for her phone number, but she couldn't remember, so she told me to leave her a note, which I did the next day, but her gate was locked so that I could knock on the door.  I haven't seen her out.  Now a week has passed since I've seen her - very quickly for me, perhaps not so for her -  and I am worried that she won't remember who I am or that I forgot her.  Today is another busy day, but I am going to walk by and leave another note. Maybe she will answer if I call out. Another friend at church knows her, but not well and doesn't see her out much anymore.

I wonder how many of these houses here have a lonely person living inside. With this being a tourist area, it is easy to assume that most of the houses belong to the upwardly mobile or real estate investors. But there are some people who perhaps have been forgotten, and soon their stories will be lost, too.