Dear Kate,
My neighbor and I have the same conversation every morning. Weâve done this for six months.
I step outside to take a sip of coffee on the porch, say good morning to the birds. My neighbor hears the squeak of my screen door. Her feet fly to the porch. As fast as 91-year-old feet can fly.
âHoney,â she says, eyes filled with alarm. âThe squirrel was in your bird feeder.â
âHe was in there, darling.â Her finger shakes as she points. âI saw him. He climbed down from the roof. The roof!â She glares up at the eves, anticipating the culpritâs return.
âItâs alright,â I say. âThereâs plenty of birdseed.â
She stares back at me blankly. Thatâs it? I donât care at all?
When I settle into my chair with my coffee, unwilling to get a broomstick and chase down the squirrel, she seems to accept it with a short, disapproving nod. Fine. Then she gives me a wave.Â
âAlright, darling. You have a nice morning.â Her door opens, and she goes back inside.
The next day, we do it again.Â
Over the past six months, I canât think of anyone Iâve spent more time with than my neighbor. Most afternoons, we eat lunch together on the porch, our chairs a few feet apart. I eat carrots and hummus, she has a diet coke. The bubbles help her indigestion, she says. The Texas sun warms our arms and legs as it has since we were born in this place, a few miles and seven decades apart. âFeels good, doesnât it?â are often the only words we exchange.Â
In the weeks since I moved in, Iâve become consumed with observing our parallel lives: Two women, alone, side by side. One at the start of her adult life, the other nearing the end.
We are technically roommates. We share equal halves of a 1930s farmhouse split straight down the middle. I imagine the 1970s mustache of an enterprising real estate developer twitching on the word âduplex.â âSame space but twice the price!â
The division between us is so flimsy I can hear not just the sound of her TV but the showsâ explicit dialogue. She watches Turner Classic Movies and reruns of what Iâve identified as either M*A*S*H or Bonanza. Iâve learned a lot about âThe Duke.âÂ
The TV is her primary companion. She lives by herself. She had a husband, but he died. She does not have a cell phone. She does not have a computer. She has a landline, which rings constantly. Itâs mostly scammers asking her for money. I can hear the desperation in her voice as she asks again and again, âWho are you?â Then frustration as she hangs up. âQuit calling!â The phone slams.Â
Up until a few weeks ago, I thought my neighbor was 81 years old, around the same age as my grandparents. Then, she stopped me on the porch. She wanted to show me the paper program from a friendâs funeral, a man who had died that week. Under his name it read: March 1929 - February 2020. âSee darling,â she said, pointing at the dates. âHe was born on the same day as me. He was exactly my age.â
The kindergarten math clicked in my head. 1929. Thatâs not 81, thatâs 91. My neighbor was alive to witness the fall of Hitler. The return of U.S. troops. The beginning of the war in Vietnam. The long, protracted end of the war in Vietnam. The civil rights movement. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Twin Towers. The birth of the iPhone. Sheâs been here the whole time: She watched Austin transform from a dusty college town into the home of billionaires and technology magnates, blue glass condos jutting up from the ground like knives. She saw it all.
Today, she sees what she can from the porch. She sees the squirrel.Â
She also sees our mailman. She runs out to say hello to him faster than sheâs ever said hello to me. âHi honey!â She yells across the street. Heâs still five houses away. âHowâs your mother?â
When he gets to our driveway, he hesitates.
He must come onto the porch. He must deliver the mail. But at our house, it will mean at least ten minutes of chitchat. Thereâs no way around it.Â
When I hear his feet start up the porch steps, I close my email. I peek through the blinds. This dance, this daily routine, this is something I can not miss.Â
He approaches at an angle, but she spots him. âDarling!â He stops short. Caught. âHow are the kids?â âAnd your wife?â âAnd your mother?â He answers, nodding and chatting and glancing back at his truck between sentences. Amazon packages are still stacked high and the sun is beating down. Seconds tick by, then minutes. âLong route today,â he says, wiping sweat from his face. âI gotta get going.âÂ
âGoodbye!â She yells after him as he turns down the sidewalk. âI love you!â
Then, there it is: He turns, smiles, and says he loves her too.Â
My neighbor isâby no meansâwithout love. A wonderful friend visits twice a week to take her to the grocery store, to buy her new summer dresses, and to pick fresh flowers for the windowsill. There are also friends who drop by unannounced, friends who bring their grandchildren over to say hello and wave from the car. At Christmas, her entire church congregation came to our front yard to sing carols.
She celebrated her 91st birthday a few weeks ago: twenty people went to the party! They ate seafood, popcorn shrimp, coleslaw, and french fries, with a thick slice of cake for dessert. My 25th birthday party? Guests included me and my mother.
And yet, my neighbor is also intensely preoccupied with death. When we sit together outside, a mug of coffee resting on my knees, her daily concerns and lifelong fears spill forth, each more worrisome than the last. She speaks so quickly itâs like someone blowing air into a balloon, one forceful rush. Everything must come out at once. I think about it and I understand: She doesnât know the next time someone will stop to listen.Â
She tells me stories about breast cancer and colon cancer and liver cancer and car wrecks, shootings and muggings and robberies and kidnappings. She tells me about friends who have died. Family members who have died. Strangers who have died. There are hail storms coming, she says. Winds will be high. And did I hear about the rainstorm in Killeen?
She warns me about women who have been attacked, women who have gone missing. The city isnât safe anymore. I should remember to lock the door at night. I shouldnât go for runs at night.Â
âThatâs what theyâre saying,â she tells me. âIt happens all the time.â
It does happen all the time. I am not naive. Long before the coronavirus, there were plenty of ways for young women to die. But Iâve spent a year contemplating the darkness in life, and Iâm ready to think about something different. Iâm itching to not worry about death but to worry about lifeâto swim in the lake and jump off of rope swings and drink too much Shiner and get a sunburn on my nose.
In the last six months, life on either side of the wall has looked exactly the same. At 91, my neighbor didnât have much to do. At 25, neither did I. I worked. I wrote. I answered emails. I cooked dinner. I washed the dishes. I mopped the floor. I read a book. I called my mom. We both went to sleep alone, night after night.
For a year, that was fine.
But now, the city of Austin is exploding. I hear live music thrumming from bars. Party boats float across the lake; six-packs are strapped down to kayaks. Suddenly, everyone has friends. Everyone has a party to go to. Everyone has a tan and cute white jeans and good abs and painted toenails.
I have my neighbor. And the squirrel. And the mailman.
We sit on the porch day after day, and I feel resentment brewing: Is this my future? Am I looking not at a neighbor but at a reflection of myself, my own inevitable fate? In 70 short years, will I still be on this porch, rocking in this chair?
My neighborâs worst fear is death. Mine is missing out on life.Â
I donât mean that in a silly way. I donât mean missing out on parties or shopping or job promotions or dresses or cocktails. I mean missing the things that are precious and scarce: Love. Intimacy. Belonging. Finding your place in the world, a strength of self developed not alone but in deep connection with others.
In movies about the end of World War II, another global event that left the world broken and in turmoil, the story is always the same. The soldiers come ashore, crisp in their uniforms. They grab their best girl by her trim waist, buy a two-bedroom starter home, bounce two chubby babies on their knees, and sit down to a pot roast dinner.
But what about the women no one came home to? The women who spent four years alone, desperate, only to find themselves left permanently that way? They must have waited by the window, watching. How long did they stay until it became clear: No one was coming. What happened to them?
In many ways, life is scarier than death. The world owes us nothing. Nothing is promised. Finding a person to hold hands with for seven decades is not a given. Holding a child in your lap, running your fingers through their downy hair to keep them cool in the summer heat, is not a given. Buying a home, connecting with a community, investing in meaningful workâit does not happen for everyone. It does not happen overnight. Itâs a rare success to live a meaningful life, to make it to 91 still surrounded by love. Itâs the scarcity that makes it special.
I know this, but I find myself racking my brain, pouring over ways to make it come true. Surely I can force the pieces on the chessboard. How do I avoid being left behind? What do I have to do? I do not want to wait at the window any longer.
Of course, the best place to think is on my front porch. With my cup of coffee. As soon as I sit down, my neighbor comes out.
âHoney!â she says. âDid you see your broccoli plant? The squirrel ate it!â
So much for quiet contemplation.
In front of our house, on either side of the porch, are two giant rose bushes. They are symmetrical in every way. Same size, same shape. Last week, my neighborâs burst into bloom. Flowers covered every inch. They bloomed a dark and deep pink, fragrant in the heat and heavy with thick petals. On my side of the porch: nothing. Zilch. My rosebush is brown and dry and dead.
Itâs a dud. I think. Itâs a dud and Iâm a dud and nothing will ever bloom here again. I am an old maid with a dead rosebush and I may as well sign up for an AARP membership and collect the discounts.
At least she lived a full life, I think. Iâll be stuck here forever.
But today, I noticed something new. A rosebud. It appeared out of nowhere. It was not there yesterday. Then today it was. I stood barefoot in the grass, staring at it.
Itâs not dark pink but light, the color of bubblegum. I looked back and forth between the two sides of the porch, comparing. Our rose bushes arenât the same, I realized. Theyâre different.
Something beautiful appeared, right outside my window. Sometimes you just have to wait. You never know what will bloom.
XOXO,
Ali
My Book Rec: A Visit From The Good Squad
Itâs hard to describe this book other than to say: Jennifer Egan is a genius. A legit genius. Itâs a novel composed of several interwoven short stories. But that doesnât do it justice. You should read it. I will be taking a trip to Half Price Books this weekend to acquire everything else Jennifer Egan has ever written. Because she is a genius.
She also dated Steve Jobs! When she was like 20! Heâd already been on the cover of Time! He brought her a Mac to type her short stories on. Type she did. Please enjoy this excerpt from The New Yorkerâs profile of Egan.
âIt was very fun to have him be so in love with me, honestly,â she said. âI would call him at his office from the pay phones at the Penn library, and, no matter what he was doing, he would always come to the phone. We would have these long conversations, and then heâd say, âWell, I can see some reporters waiting for me outside my office so I probably should go.â â She giggled. âI found it hilarious that he had this gigantic company attached to him. It seemed stupefyingly overwhelming, but also funny.â When he told her that he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, she burst out laughing. âI was in hysterics! I think he liked that reaction. I just thought it was absurd!â
You LOVE to see it. H/T to my very smart, literary friends for this recommendation.
The book: A Visit From The Good Squad
My rating: đ„đ„đ„đ„đ„
Read more: Jennifer Eganâs Travels Through Time