I don’t know the people on our street well, or at all, really. I should, I know this. I’m a terrible person probably, and I won’t try to defend my lack of neighborly prowess.
Three women though, whose names I do not know have brought me a subtle joy throughout the years we’ve called Ann Arbor our home. (It makes everyone in my family shake their heads in shame that I don’t their names. “We’ve lived here for almost 5 years,” they say. “We have been in their homes. How do you not remember their names?”)
Almost every day these women meet each other on a bench in one of their front yards (Barbara? Diane? I just don’t know.) They walk their dogs together, have keys to each others’ homes. I’ve seen them literally bring a cup of sugar (Shirley? Martha?) over to her friend’s front door in a measuring cup.
I don’t watch them with an envious eye, though maybe at first I did. It’s not easy to start over at 40, and watching them laugh and talk until the lighting bugs came out, I suppose I wondered if I’d ever have that again. Mostly, they were a picture of what hoped looked like.
All but one – the one with the bench in her front yard – have moved. These things happen, of course. Friendship certainly can’t keep a woman in place. It ought to make her move, do something, go somewhere, believe in herself.
Still, I’ll miss watching the three of them meeting up on that bench at the day’s end. Seemed like a great ritual, although that was lost these last several months because of the times we are in. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they moved: it’s just too dangerous to be that close.
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Books Published:
Courses I’m Teaching: From Inspiration to Habit: Begins February 15.
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