Neighborhood Wisdom
Well-earned wisdom comes from the most unlikely of places.
Well-earned wisdom comes from the most unlikely of places.
My neighbor keeps me grateful. She’s 83 years old and sits on her porch in the Carolina heat. She tends a rose garden with her dog, Chyna, who must be at least 83 in dog years. Everyday, I walk by her house on my way into town. We exchange small pleasantries, comments on the weather or nearby construction or goings-on about the town, of which there are few. We keep our exchanges brief, gently affirming each other's existence without demanding much of the other’s time. Still, somehow, she manages to slip in little nuggets of the kind of well-earned wisdom that accompanies old age.
We keep our exchanges brief, gently affirming each other's existence without demanding much of the other’s time.
“When it’s my time to go,” she once began to say to me from her garden, hose in hand, “I don’t need flowers or nothing on my grave. God has given me enough flowers in my life.” This morning, I ran past her on a jog, desperately out of breath and on the verge of stopping. “What are you doing?” she called out from her porch. “Just going for a run,” I wheezed. “Must be nice,” she said with wry charm. Here I was, cursing my legs for burning and the sun for its unrelenting heat, rather than thanking my body for carrying me through the struggle, and praising the daylight for making the roses bloom.