New Stella

It seems every other year Stella is in favor of our family. The other years she's into one or another of our neighbors. She'll leave for Florida one autumn in one frame of mind only to come back here the next spring with a completely different agenda. This year when she came back north I was very indifferent to her, stayed away as much as I could because last year was the year she anonymously called the cops on us because of the smoke from a backyard fire. We traveled a lot in the first half of the summer anyway, so we just didn't see that much of Stella.

And then one day we were taking a walk, as usual, when Dorothy came hobbling out of her house to say hi. She loved visiting with us and told us so. She showed her pleasure with life and the people who are good to her. She told Jacob he's a good boy and told me what a lovely person I am, and wondered how I got to be such a nice person. Dorothy is the complete opposite of Stella. She asked that we come back often and to always knock on her door when we're going by.

Jacob was completely taken with Dorothy from the beginning and I think a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that his great-grandmother passed away just a few weeks before we met Dorothy. Meeting her probably filled a void in Jacob.

Over the next few weeks we learned a lot about Dorothy, but she learned very little about us because she'd need to ask the same questions each time we knocked on her door. For good reason though, because together we figured out her age - she couldn't remember how old she was, but told me the year she was born and I told her that will make her 94 this fall.

We've been bringing her baked treats, crafts and a photograph of us with our names on the back so she can remember who we are. In turn, Dorothy has told us a lot of her history and about her two sons - one 'bad', one 'good'. She can't remember her late husband's name but knows he fought in WWII and that he was never the same after that.

She has her favorite neighbors, like the ones who take her to church every week, and her not-so-favorites, like the one who has the crazy wife. Dorothy loves to show off a picture of herself and say how pretty she used to be, you know, back when she had teeth, she jokes. She has a very good sense of humor. Today I said we couldn't come in because I had to go home and make lunch. "You've gotta go get drunk?" she asked. I laughed as I corrected her and she smirked back at me.

It's almost as if Stella has sensed the shifting dynamic in the air because she's been by more often the last couple weeks than most of the summer. More than likely though, it's probably because the back neighbors have pissed her off again. She actually called the cops on them the other day because the daughter's boyfriend kept driving his diesel truck up and down the driveway. So now we're the good guys again. She sits and chats like old times and brings over a plate of whatever she cooked that day. It's nice to have the company, and I'm starting to warm to her again. Sabine points across the yard in recognition now when she sees Stella.

I hope our old lady friends are around when Sabine is a bit older so that she will have nice memories of them like Jacob does. And I hope when I'm that age I have a little family to come visit me.