Stella!

No, I'm not doing a Marlon Brando impersonation. I'm referring to my next-door neighbor, Stella. What can I say about her? She's quite a character. Everybody should know a Stella. Maybe you have one of your own, but she's called Betty, or Mary, or whatever it is they were naming the babies 80 years ago. Stella is a feisty kind of lady, I think they actually invented the word to describe her. The type who grew up during the Great Depression, has lived alone for more than a dozen years, has been in the same town all her life and has the stories to prove it.

When I asked her if it was ok to use her name on here, she started spelling it for me. I think she would like me to write a book about her...somebody probably should because this lady has stories! I love to hear about how everything we can see from our house used to be farmland, and how there's an ancient Freihofer's truck burried in our back yard. I want so badly to dig up the yard just to see, and thinking about it now...I want her to be right. When it comes to who lived in which houses and during what years, Stella knows it all. But her favorite topic is neighborhood gossip (not that we have a neighborhood). She's a walking soap opera. I'm not going to detail any of it here, but the stuff she comes up with is pretty outrageous.

My favorite story about Stella happened a couple years ago just after her son had taken her ladder away because she was climbing it to the roof to clean out the gutters. Like that was going to stop her. Any reasonable person would give up and leave the gutters to a teenager looking for odd jobs.

So one morning I was getting the mail and I saw a butt coming out of the third story attic window. No lie. I was really very curious so I stood there watching and soon a pair of legs appeared. Then a torso strongly resembling the one belonging to Stella. And when her head cleared the window frame it was confirmed. I don't think I need to say anything more here, just close your eyes and picture it for a minute.

I wanted to yell up to her, but I was more than a little afraid that I would startle her and she'd fall to the ground right before my very eyes. I did anyway, and told her to get down from there. She refused on account of something up top needed attending to. After I was done with the scolding I decided it was too painful to watch so what could I do but go inside and cross my fingers. Later that day Stella came over to have a laugh about it and begged me to not tell her son what I had witnessed. Every once in a while something reminds Jacob of this incident, he laughs to himself and shakes his saying "Stehwa was on the roof!" This is how much we have told the story, Jacob actually thinks he remembers it.

Stella comes over a lot. She just shows up at the door. Now that we've got a front door with a window, I sometimes walk around the corner to see a face pressed to the glass, hands cupped around the temples, and it scares the hell out of me for a second or two before I realize who it is. Or I'll be in the other room and I hear the faint twisting of the door knob. My brain goes into overdrive, "Where's the phone? Call 911! Go get a knife...no, a big one." It just kills me! And I mean this in a funny sort of way. She knows I keep the door locked at all times. Is she trying to send me a message? Is she just testing me? "Good, your door was locked. That's the way it should be."

Mostly she catches me just out of the shower, or still in my pajamas. Today was the latter. In she came, fresh from her backyard where she'd been doing some heavy-duty yard work. "Just a little break." she said. I had been on my way out to the car when Stella got here, so I carried on with getting the stroller out to the trunk and came right back in. I was out of the house for less than a minute, and when I opened the door I saw the two of them on the floor singing the ABC's. Then they did some counting. "I think I know what's going on here," I thought.

Ever since I told her this past spring that Jacob is going to be homeschooled, she's been acting strange at times. "You going to go to school soon?" she asked Jacob. "No, we're going to give homeschooling a try," I interjected. "You're what?" looking at me like I had three heads. I explained, she still didn't get it. Then, turning to Jacob, she said "Nooo, you don't want to stay at home. You want to go to school like all the other kids, don't you?" In all her meddling, this is the only time I ever actually got mad. "Stella! You're not allowed to do that, to say those things to him!" I fired back. She didn't come back over for a long time after that.

When she did start coming back, it was a complete 180. She'd play it totally cool and act like she was hip to homeschooling thing. I think she knew that she crossed the line that day and was trying to make up for it. So now when she's here, it's tutor time or something? Like she's personally responsible for his at-home learning.

Jacob loves it when she's here, and it's been a while since she's come in further than the entry way, so he got so excited to show off all the new toys and the work that's been done in the bathroom. "Here, I'll show oou, pum on Stehwa, I'll show oou the bathroom." This is becoming on of his trademark phrases, "here, I'll show oou." And it's so damn cute.

After a bit Stella decided it was time to go so she asked Jacob to help her up off the floor. I joked around with her by asking what she'd do if she was home alone and couldn't get up. I told her she needed one of those emergency buttons to wear around her neck. She said, "I have one, I just don't wear it." That's our Stella, such a rebel.