All About You FRIDAY – Uncovering Human

I live next door to a woman I thought I knew. I don’t know why I thought that because I’d never really had a conversation with her. But for decades, I’ve seen her come and go and I pieced together a story in my mind that satisfied my curiosity.

She is odd. Standing about 5 feet tall, weighing less than 100 pounds and wearing layers of clothing, even on hot days, she would emerge from her house and walk down the driveway, picking up a leaf here and there to put in a pile on the side of the road. She always wore a baseball cap that covered a matted head of hair. She should get that hair cut off, I would think.

She wasn’t always like that. Decades ago, she would disappear for weeks only to return looking like she had been skiing. She would lay out in her backyard catching some rays. And she always drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

In the past year, I noticed she would sit in her Jeep for hours at a time. That’s odd, I would think. And all of a sudden she looked really old.

I wish I could tell you I was the hero that thought to check in on her one hot summer day. But it wasn’t me.

“Have you seen her lately?” my former housemate asked. He had dropped by for a visit.

“Her lights were on a couple of nights ago,” I said, shrugging off any concern because that is the easy thing to do after a long day at work. But I hadn’t actually laid eyes on her.

He went into her house and found her, sitting on a small couch. In the heat and the dark. Her feeble voice answered his greeting. He had to make his way through a path surrounded by stuff. A lot of stuff. Her life in piles all over her house.

He became her friend. He stopped by every day and I would see him patiently helping her into his truck so they could run errands.

“Did you know she used to be a bank executive?” he said to me one day. “And she loves hockey. She’s been a season ticket holder for the Red Wings for decades.” He told me she loves pizza and plain cheese sandwiches. And she has a sweet tooth.

Never would have guessed that, I thought, as I continued with my life.

Then one day he asked me to check on her and as I approached her house, I heard her cries for help. I ran in to find her on the floor, confused and unable to stand up. I called the paramedics.

“How long has she been living like this?” they asked me as they observed her hoarded surroundings. They took her to the hospital and there I stood in the middle of her home, surrounded by her life.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve visited her in the hospital most nights after work. I brought her a plant and some baked goods the first night. She took a bite out of the cinnamon roll I picked from what was left over in the market nearby and she spat it out.

“Ahh!” she grimaced as if she had eaten a bug. “It’s dry! Sorry, I don’t know why I just said that.” I laughed out loud. It didn’t look good at all.

But that began my discovery of the human being I thought I knew. I sat and asked her questions and as the days went by I found myself looking forward to our visits. I listened as she told me stories of her younger years raised by Hungarian parents in the Delray part of Detroit. She is witty and sarcastic. She is sweet and considerate. She loves tabbouli but only the fresh stuff. She doesn’t like condiments of any kind, but she likes cinnamon on her oatmeal. She loves pistachios. And she only wants to eat with plasticware to make sure nobody else’s germs have touched the utensils.

In forty years of working at the bank, she never missed a day of work. “People would ask me why I didn’t take a day off?” she said. “If I wasn’t sick, why would I take a day off?” And then she used her four weeks of paid vacation to head to Aspen to ski.

And I do believe she is the biggest Red Wings fan I’ve ever met. “Hockey first. Football second. Baseball third.” she said to me this week when I was trying to find a channel for her to watch. “And I like Ohio State. I should just put that out there right now,” she said with a gleam in her eye. She makes me laugh.

We got her permission and we all got to work cleaning her house out in preparation for her return. In the process, I’ve uncovered more of her life. Her sense of style. Her interest in sports medicine (I uncovered many books that should have been on my shelf). I saw a picture of her on the ski slopes back in the day. And she used to race sailboats. Big ones. I would not have been cool enough to hang with her, I thought.

“You’re such a good person for doing all that,” someone said. A good person would have started this discovery decades ago.

It looks like she’ll be able to come home one day and I’m grateful for a second chance. For a chance to be a real neighbor. One night at the hospital when my partner and former housemate all visited together, she looked up and said, “It’s like I have my own party!” The color had returned to her skin and her bright blue eyes sparkled. Her smile said it all. She has been seen.

In light of all that has happened in my world and the bigger one, it seems more important than ever to uncover the human that sits inside of our neighbors. It’s easy to paint each other with such broad strokes that we allow our assumptions to write a story that isn’t even true, or at the very least, grossly incomplete.

I live next door to a woman I now know. And I’m a better person for it.

It’s been a long week. Don’t forget to celebrate.

Until next time…