One time I remember looking through a tall kitchen window at a banana tree in the back yard. In my arms I held a very alert ten-month-old infant girl. The backyard was so vibrantly green she reached to touch the color and her hand collided with the window. She looked up at me in fear. I smiled and laughed, holding her closer while sliding the window open. This time she reached her hand out and now touched fresh air–all fear gone. I closed the window and we practiced noticing it. I breathed on it and made a little smiley face. This infant taught me what a window is. But we spent most of the time with the window open, creating space to just be in the moment of wind, sunshine, and color.
This winter I have been opening and closing many windows. Sometimes you are just enjoying your day and put your hand up to explore and yet discover the window is closed even though the view seemed clear. Mostly I assume people are transparent but what a surprise to learn their windows. Many are encased in a glass shell that only seems visible until you try to share a discovery together. I am open to learning though and having a better ability to see.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, I jumped out of bed in a rush to complete errands for the day. My hurried steps came to a halt when I saw an elderly woman sitting on a milk crate right next door. I just watched her for a second, trying to notice her window. She appeared impatient and unclear.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked.
“Here,” she said, stabbing the air with a UPS tag.
“Oh, the truck is on its way?”
“They don’t understand. Call and no understand. Talk and talk, no answers,” she retorted in a thick Russian accent.
She is scrawny in the way old people sometimes shrink; her face carries many wrinkles; her skin appears grey and stressed especially around her grimacing mouth.
“Let me call for you and see when they will arrive,” I offered.
She eyed me suspiciously and then waved as if to say suit yourself. The UPS woman sounded surprised that a Russian grandmother had perched herself on the street in protest of not knowing when the package would arrive. I explained that her door buzzer does not work and walking is difficult for her. Sure enough the disappointing news was confirmed. Arrival time was a three and a half hour window.
I reported back to the sceptical grandmother and she looked off in the distance, saying I told you so without words. But a window had been opened.
She turned to me smiling a little, cautiously. The whole time I had been chuckling in understanding; “Geesh, people these days. They can’t even deliver a simple package.” I too was expecting a delivery, so we bonded over our shared dilemma.
“You know computer?” she asked me.
“A little,” I said.
“I pay you to teach me e-mail? Come over help. Everything on screen not understanding,” she admitted sheepishly, without blame this time.
“Sure, I would be happy to help,” I said, smiling and wondering what the heck I was getting myself into.
The next morning at 9 a.m. on Christmas Day, I called her landline and she buzzed me in from the second floor. Climbing the stairs was easy for me, but I worried how she managed every day with no elevator in the building.
She greeted me happily though and showed me her immaculate one bedroom apartment. She had a flat screen TV in her bedroom blaring loud and one in the living room. She had made us tea mixing Rose Hip and Mango in a soothing blend that I enjoyed with two lumps of brown sugar. And she told me her story.
Born in 1938 in Russia, Natasha fled her native country to escape the Nazis. But her father and many of her mother’s relatives were not so fortunate. She found safety in Europe and then finally moved to Southern California as a young adult. She was tall and extremely overweight, which caused her trouble with her feet. So she visited a female podiatrist, a doctor who had just earned her degree. Eventually she would slim down some and in the meantime had formed a friendship with the doctor, who asked Natasha if she thought she could open her own practice.
“What’s to ask? Either work or not. Just try,” Natasha said, staring at me as if to say people ask the dumbest questions. Natasha took a job in the new office and worked there for 24 years.
As she aged, she decided to move north, so she could be closer to her brother who lived in Marin. Her mother was living in a senior community home behind the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco. She bought her condominium four years ago and her mother passed away recently. Plus her brother moved to Venice Beach, where he opened a restaurant and lives with his wife and their daughter.
She had pictures everywhere of family. They are all tall, fair skinned, blond, and beautiful. In one photo Natasha stands around five feet eight, wide set, and elegant in a business suit. Today she is probably around five feet five, grey hair that is thin but still full, and maybe 120 pounds. She had dressed up for my visit in black slacks, grey sweater, and a gold necklace. A dramatic change from the boots and sweatpants she wore when I first met her.
She’s cantankerous, but smiles when I laugh at her ornery spirit. Old people help me see the future by observing closely the way they create their present moments. She was lonely but still fighting and she knew it.
“What god? God allah, god jesus, god where? I don’t believe in God,” she blurted.
I waited patiently.
“But in the morning, you know. I think maybe worse,” she said touching her the top of her head. “Wasn’t cancer just a tumor. Took it out but then bad infection. My niece found me on the floor,” she started to explain.
I stopped chewing on the bagel, cream cheese, and salmon she had served me.
“What happened?” I said, hooked for sure.
“Nothing. Top of your head just scalp. Brain fine,” she laughed despite herself. “Leave off, leave off. Brain covered fine. In the morning I say to power not god some faith higher power, thank you not worse, could be worse,” she finished.
She motioned for me to touch the back of her head and, yes, the round top part of her scalp was missing. She feels fine, she said, and functions well, but sometimes she says she notices her memory is off. She asked me to recall a word she had used to describe an item on the menu in her brother’s restaurant. I did and we moved on.
She was ready to begin her lesson. We shuffled to her bedroom where her laptop sat. She pulled out the chair for me to sit in front of the computer, so I could write down the steps she would need to memorize. Instead, I found a chair in the kitchen and returned. She looked proud to sit in front of her laptop. I only said a few words and quickly the Yahoo account she had not used for four months was up and running just fine.
We experimented by her sending me an e-mail and then she went into her contacts–13 of her friends–and sent them a friendly holiday note. She looked teary-eyed and I stared at the computer screen as if it were a window. I almost put my hand on the glass.
We returned to the living room and relaxed on her sofa. I reached for her cell phone and said I would send her a text message. Now she seemed totally verklempt. She grumbled some about her family ignoring her and telling her she was too old to learn how. I wrote a jokey line about seeing her in the ocean so we could learn how to surf together and then sent it. I told her that a 13-year-old had taught me how to text message around a year ago. Before that I would receive texts, but have no idea how to reply.
One thousand one. One thousand two. One thousand three. One thousand four. We waited forever.
Ching-a-ling-ling chimed a bell from her cell phone. The look on her face was identical to the look on the infant girl’s face when we opened the kitchen window together and she could fling her hand freely into fresh air–surprise and joy. Right then my younger brother called from Hawaii and while I chatted for a few minutes, she read her text.
We reached for a calendar she had on her living room coffee table and scheduled a time for me to return for lunch and more learning. She didn’t rush me out, but narrated that she had two buses to catch in time to have her nails done before joining friends for dinner at a Russian restaurant on Geary Street. Busy lady it turns out.
On her calendar she wrote down when it was time to change the flowers. At least four vases were full with different kinds of vibrant color. She had healthy potted plants everywhere; they glistened green in the sunshine. She walked with me outside to her fire escape, which doubled as a veranda where she had hung outside flower pots.
“But only one now. Told me only one,” she said, waving to the back wall of cookie cutter condos that stretched as far as the eye could see. Hers was the only flower pot. “Don’t understand,” she muttered.
Standing in her doorway, I said with a huge smile that I would text her a delicious menu for our future lunch. She literally doubled over in laughter. I waved good bye and she gently closed the door.
What’s that old Chinese saying about when one window closes another window of opportunity opens. This winter I’m learning to watch for and appreciate those moments.
Posted by karolinawrites 
