In The Quiet

If I would have run downstairs and gone to ask her, would she have been able to tell me?

Would there have been an answer to what would she change, if she could? From my son's bedroom window upstairs, I could see my neighbor sitting in her yard. She had her back to me and could never know that I watched her in the August sun, an ivory blanket across her lap.

I wished I could read her mind. I would not physically intrude and break the peace she was part of that day while she sat, her birdfeeders she was so careful to always have filled, surrounding her.

The sky was a bright, clear blue that morning and I saw her look up to the trees. She was so close to me that I could see the light fringe of her soft brown hair being lifted up by a breeze. We think our mornings are all the same, but I could feel the difference in this one. It was another morning for me, the hours flying by inside with me busy with the routine of a home with three children, but outside in her yard, time seemed to have stopped.

My neighbor would be moving soon. Before meeting her, there was no one I had the easy relationship of running back and forth between houses. She initiated an easy love, beginning with a tray of pizzelles she brought to my door. I sent her platter back to her, this time filling the blue ribbon-edged plate with chocolate cake. A few days later, her daughter was back to our door with extra strawberries left from a trip to a farmer's market.

This is how we did it, sharing from the ordinary days in our lives with what we had plenty of. Some nights I would send the blue platter over filled with the chicken and rice I had made for dinner, other times the platter would come our way with a serving she had set aside for me of the hash brown casserole her family liked so much.

In the two summers that I knew her, the blue platter passed between us more than fifty times. I had stopped thinking about how lonely I was and instead of how lucky I was. Lunch had became a surprise knock on my back patio door with an invitation to share half her sandwich and a small soup. She told me knowing me helped her keep her figure trim. While I enjoyed someone preparing food for me for a change, I could keep an eye on my children while they played in the yard.

I remember thinking that this sharing of food and the ordinariness of our days was what I felt missing from my life.

She was a good neighbor. The kind that made a row of houses feel like a neighborhood. The thing about falling for someone's charm is that you don't imagine a day you'll be without it. Neighbors always stay, don't they? At least until they move away.

Earlier that month, she had been told she had melanoma. She told me she wanted to be close to her family before she started treatment. There were a few things she wanted to stay behind and do herself before she left for another state, but she wanted her girls to move on ahead and make friends before starting school. Today, her house was boxed and packed. Her 9 and 11-year-old daughters gone, her husband already working at his new job. That Friday, he was coming back for her and the movers would do their work over the weekend.

I watched her as my fingers gripped the ledge of the window, pushing it down closed back to where it had been. My throat tight with holding back from impulsively calling out her name, the words thank you, I love you, flying out of my mouth like a child who sees his mother after being away. But we had already said our goodbyes earlier in the week, formally giving our hugs.

This morning, with my heart pulling me to her, I stayed back. I wanted her, my eyes stinging with tears from it, but not more than the cost of robbing her of a single sacred moment of being exactly where she wanted to be -- home.

 

* * *

 

My neighbor passed away two years ago on December 8. She was ill from August until December, and I have yet to meet a kinder, more loving person in this neighborhood. On her way out of our city that week, she dropped off her blue platter with pizzelles again. I knew that this time the plate would remain with me, and I wouldn't get the chance to return it filled with something from my home to hers.

Rest and peace to you, my dear friend. I miss you.