Friendly Visit Is a Gentle Reminder of What Matters Most in Life

“Hello, neighbor! I haven’t seen you since way before the holiday. Thank you for the card and the picture of Anna. God bless you. I am glad you are my neighbor. I only wish we had better relations. I know you are busy. But is there always tomorrow? Take care. Your neighbor.”

A note like this can only hit you with a thud. Better relations? Are we having some sort of feud? I thought we were friends.

She’s about 90. She lives alone in the big blue house down the road shrouded by shaggy spruce trees. When I first moved to the area, I was told to stay away from her. I was told she might come at me with a shotgun if I dared walk on her land.

But when I met her about two summers ago, I discovered someone else entirely. She welcomed me in, sat me down for lasagna and pie. She invited me back. She took to calling me on the telephone to warn me about weather patterns, to offer insight into the coyote problem, to remind me to look for the blue heron in our pond; you never know how long a blue heron will present itself for view. And so my husband and daughter and I would visit her from time to time; we’d sit on her porch and listen to her talk about the state of the world and her asparagus patch and God.

And now comes word that she’s sitting there all alone worrying about our tomorrows running out. Oh, jeez. And don’t I feel awful? I should have visited her over the holidays, and I didn’t get around to it. I should have, and I didn’t. Some friend I am.

Then again, does a friend write you a note intended to make you feel awful? Does a friend guilt you into being her friend?

“Let’s go,” I say to Alex. “We have to go visit the old lady.” We bundle Anna up in her snowsuit, head out under the bluest winter sky. None of this feels right. I’m not making this visit on friendly terms; no, I’m doing a chore. She’s the one who turned it into a chore. That note. Was that note really fair?

It’s tricky being friends with an old lady. It just is. Is she a friend, or is she a project you’ve taken on? A note like that can cause you to wonder.

“Well, you’re here now,” she says when she opens the door. “I’m surprised. I thought it was too cold out.” She’s hunched over more than I remember, and her hair is so white it appears to be turning yellow. She’s in the same socks and aqua-blue housedress she was in last time I saw her; in fact, I’ve never seen her wear anything else.

“Anna got so big,” she says. “Can I give her cookies? I made her cookies. I love her. Do you know that? If I were young, I would go to China tomorrow and get one just like her.”

Usually it’s hard to know how to respond to her. But silence makes things easier. It gives her the room she needs to talk. She shows us a potted dandelion. “Did you know you could get dandelions to grow inside?” she asks. Just a little experiment she ran. “Hey,” she says to Alex, “Could you bring me a book on Judaism sometime? I do not have one book on Judaism in this house, can you believe that?” She points her finger at him. “I believe in all faiths. Religion is about the quest, not the truth.”

Anna is watching the birds in the bird feeders outside. It occurs to me that my bird feeders have been empty for a while now. It occurs to me that I haven’t read any of the books on Judaism in our house.

She asks us about China, about our trip next spring to go back and adopt the baby who will become Anna’s sister. “I’m praying for that baby,” she says. “I want you to know I’m praying for her every day.”

I’m surprised. And grateful. I’ve been keeping myself too busy to even think about the baby, much less pray. Prayers, I think, are a lot like bird feeders. And books waiting to be read.

“I have something for you,” she says. “I don’t know if you’ll choose to accept it.” She pulls herself out of her chair, shuffles with much effort to the next room. She returns with two pillowcases embroidered in blue and pink and yellow. “One for Anna, and one for her sister, OK?” she says. “Of course, I didn’t know that’s who I was making them for at the time.”

The time was 20 years ago, when her own daughter died in a house fire. She tells us that she embroidered to keep herself from going crazy, embroidered all day, every day, until her hands literally gave out.

We tell her we are honored to accept her gift. We head home with two embroidered pillowcases, one for a little girl we’ve yet to meet. The pillowcase, created out of a mother’s tears, is her first official present.

We head home wondering how it happens. How can a visit that felt so wrong turn out to be so right? It’s always right, I suppose, to answer the call of an old lady.