George Street

For the past week I have been convinced that our next door neighbor does not like me. Not that she'd have sound or just reason for such dislike, yet dislike nonetheless.

I would smile.
Nothing.
A wave.
Nothing.
I even offered some chocolate chip cookies when the 'need to bake' frenzy ensued.
"I don't really eat sugar. Or butter," she replied.
So I took to the notion that perhaps she and I would never exactly be friends. Or maybe some people just aren't as quick to become pals as I would like, having just moved here and all.

Opal, the two year old living just behind us became a fast friend. She walks over to the steps of the back door just coming out of our kitchen and we play a game of 'toss the ball.' It's mostly toss, very little catch, and a whole lot of bouncing that sphere of rubber off my legs while Opal laughs. Yet, she's one of the most precious and precocious two year olds I've yet to meet; I think she'll basically talk to anyone.
But not the neighbor next door. A
And I was beginning to feel guilty that I still don't know her name.

But then tonight, I returned from yoga in an ultimate Namaste high. I sat myself down on our makeshift lanai to eat some dinner while I continued reading A Prayer for Owen Meaney (excellent novel, by the way). And I was content. I planted the seed of my intention to seek self approval, to allow myself a calm, serene, grateful existence. I asked my heart to soften and the outer edges of my being to let in light and chi and prana. (I know what you're thinking: sitting and sweating and posing on a little purple mat can beg one to do all this? The answer is yes. Yes it can.)

Nonetheless, just as I sat down, out walked my neighbor. She is a seemingly sweet older woman with jet black hair and glasses that rest nearly on the tip of her nose. She has to tilt her head just slightly to look at you over the rim of the frame. She paced back and forth along the line of plants and flowers marking where her property ends and ours begins. And then, rather intensely, she began pulling out the weeds that had draped over her precious blossoms.

I watched her.
She then looked up at me and said, "These weeds are just terrible. They create a canopy over everything you want to bloom."

I took a moment before responding- partly because of the general surprise that my neighbor was in fact talking to me, and partly because in a way, what she had said seemed like this grand metaphor worthy of a thoughtful response.

"Oh that's awful," I said.
She looked back up at me. And for the briefest of seconds we just looked at one another. And then:

"It's funny how nature will even work against itself," I said.

She kept looking at me.
And then came the unexpected.
A smile.
And she just kept looking and smiling and eventually shook her head with a chuckle as older folks sometimes do when something really gets them.
Then she waved her hand and turned to walk back up the steps into her house.

So I'm beginning to think she doesn't hate me anymore.
Although I think I'm going to have to change this whole 'no butter' thing.

But not just yet...
one weed at a time.