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How my elderly neighbor taught me what perfect means
“Let me tell you something.” Cookie sat in a webbed folding chair with a light, knit blanket strewn over her legs. Every afternoon, around two, she made the perilous journey from the front door of her San Francisco home, down slick terrazzo steps, and opened her garage door where she’d set up two chairs and a TV tray. The TV tray held a transistor radio turned to NPR, a nutcracker even though she never had nuts, a roll of plain cookies, a heavy silver letter opener, and one can of Pepsi with a glass of ice next to it.
“Are you listening?” she asked me. Her watery blue eyes kept a watchful gaze on my eighteen-month-old son, Ryan, who loved to sit on the sidewalk in front of Cookie’s garage and pull weeds from between the cracks. “I’m going to tell you a secret. It took me eighty years to figure it out, and you’re going to get it for free.”
“I’m listening.”
Damp ocean air rushed over the rooftops of our San Francisco neighborhood, but it didn’t bother me. Fog and dampness were a part of living in the City, and neither would prevent my daily visits with my elderly neighbor. I was a new mother, lonely, and completely overwhelmed by caring for my young son while pregnant with my second. Visiting Cookie, gave me something to look forward to, and I loved listening to her…
