Be Careful!

The sidewalks are always flooded with water outside of this house on the corner of Barrett and 29^th Street. I’ve always wondered who lives here and what they’re doing with all the water that leaks from under their fence onto the sidewalk, creating puddles of this precious resource.

Today I find out. There’s a woman, round and curvy, with short brown hair and big sunglasses on, rinsing off her silver Prius in the street. I step off the curb in order to walk around her but she gives me a big smile and waves. Do I know her? I don’t think so yet she acts like she knows me.

“Oh, you hurt yourself you poor thing!” she exclaims, pointing at my bandaged wrist in my blue scarf sling. “What happened to you?” she asks, sympathy dripping from her. I shrug. Stop in the middle of the street to avoid getting hosed.

“I fell and broke my wrist.”

“Oh, you poor poor thing! That is just terrible! It happened to me too!  Your wrist! It is very bad!”

“Yeah, I tripped over somebody’s garden  driftwood border and fell hard on the sidewalk and caught myself with my hand and my wrist just snapped in two.”

She shakes her head, makes a Oh-I’m-so-sorry-face as a  big black car turns from Barrett and starts to barrel down the middle of the street. She quickly pulls me onto the sidewalk “Oh be careful!” she says, laughing.

“I know,” I say. “I do need to be careful. I don’t need to get run over on top of everything else! She nods serious. “So, you broke your wrist, too?” I ask.

“Oh yes. It was a long time ago!” She laughs softly, shaking her head. “What happened? We’re old! (Am I? I always resent being included in this category but I have to admit now that it’s true) “I am 65 now,” she continues.  “The bones they are not as strong as when we were younger.”

 “That’s true,” I say. “I have osteoporosis.”

She nods, frowning slightly. “Yes, and the food we eat it; is not as good as when we were younger. I went to the farmer’s market and there were all of these baby chicks with their little heads and then I look over and there was a grown chicken but it still had a little head. Its body was huge and round!” She draws a round ball motion in the air with her hands to show me how huge the chicken’s body was. It was about the size of a basketball. Then she showed me with her thumb and index finger a little circle for the size of the chicken’s head.  Sighing in disgust, she pronounced: “It's hormones! And then we eat that-- it is not good for our bodies!”

 I nod my head in agreement. “Yes, plus all of the pollution in the air!” I wave my good hand at the smoky sky. She nods, “Oh yes ! The sky, the clouds, the food, the air ! It is all pollution!”

We stand for a moment together in the street before I ask her if she speaks Spanish. I always try to ask people without just assuming simply based on how they speak or look because you never know. She beams though. “Si, hablo Espanol!” And then takes off on a torrent of fast Spanish-- something about owning her house --something about La Senora that lives with her --something about cooking. I can’t follow it of course and start laughing. She doesn’t notice at first but continues her fast-paced narration talking about how when she learned English she had to practice speaking even though she was shy about it. This much I get and nod and say, “Yes, yo necessito practicar mas tambien!” I switch to English, “However, my pronunciation is terrible!”

She shakes her head no. “No es bueno!”

 I laugh. She’s so sweet.

Finally, I ask her her name. “Hilda,” she says.

“I’m Carolina.”

“Oh Carolina!  she repeats. “It is so cute!”

 I don’t tell her this is my Spanish name; that my real name is Carol. I actually like Carolina a lot and remember how I was dubbed this when I taught up at Merritt College in the writing center. I worked with a group of young women who were from Mexico. When they found out I was Carol they all laughed and said, “Oh Carolina! You are Carolina!”  From then on, I kept this as my Spanish name. But today Hilda just gets my Spanish name because after all we are speaking Spanish. Well at least she is!

She goes on to tell me about how her mother broke her hip and how the hip is a very bad bone to break.  I agree and tell her the story of how my grandmother broke her hip when she was in her 90s and we all thought that that was it; she wasn’t going to carry on in this world any longer but, in fact, she recovered and lived for several years after this. Hilda loves this story. It makes both of us laugh, happy, that even though we are in our 60s, if we break our hip years from now, we will heal and still live for years.

  I tell her that I need to go; that I have to work. She nods and turns on the hose again to finish cleaning the Prius. I want to say how her car will be very pretty and clean in Spanish but it’s just too much effort so I say it in English. However, I can say nice to meet you in Spanish: “Mucho gusto, Hilda.”

She beams and says, “Mucho gusto, Carolina. Be careful!”

 I wave, signaling will do as I walk gingerly round the corner up Barrett St., the sound of hosed water hitting car metal following me. A cadence of Spanish singing in my head.

Healing Prayer

 

“What happened to you?” Dave is ambling down his front walk waving at me and Ian in front of his house here on 32^nd St. Cici pops her head up. She’s been working in the garden hidden behind gigantic pink floral monstrosities that had taken over the yard. She gives us a toothy grin, wiping the dirt on her soiled apron.

“I broke my wrist,” I answer, glancing down at my heavily bandaged arm resting in my impromptu sling of a turquoise blue scarf.

Dave shakes his head serious, “I’m so sorry to hear this. How did you do it?”

“I was just walking past my neighbor’s garden and there was a piece of driftwood that was hidden underneath some overgrown plants on the sidewalk and I tripped over it and fell hard and broke my wrist.”

“I understand. We’ve been there.” Dave doesn’t elaborate though I wonder what he’s broken and why. Maybe it’s tied to his 40 years of being a smoking dumbass; maybe he was walking down the sidewalk smoking up a storm not paying attention to where he was going and he fell over on a trip hazard in the sidewalk. After all, there are so many! Earlier this week, another neighbor had stopped me and asked what had happened and then shaking his head said, “Walking is so dangerous! There are so many places to trip!”  I had told him, “Yes! Be careful! You don’t want to break your wrist!”

            Now Cici comes toward us, her grin wider, revealing yellow and worn cracked teeth. “I was over here in the garden being a monkey!” she exclaimed.  “I just get down on my hands and knees and then I realize that rooting around like a monkey on my hands and knees really hurts my knees!” She performed a toothy grimace for us to demonstrate the knee pain.

“Yes, I agree you have to be careful with your knees; they can be really hard to heal,” I say.  “My mom tore her meniscus a few years ago and she was laid up and in a wheelchair with had a lot of pain.”

Dave shook his head, “Yes we need to be aware of our bodies and what can happen if we’re not… hold on just a minute, Carol, I’ll be right back.”

Ian and I stand in the broiling sun. I can tell he wants to leave but I don’t want to be rude. Plus of course I’m curious. What does Dave have for me? Cici continues to grin at us until a fluffy cat comes trotting out and does a rollover in front of us. She giggles.  “Oh, would you look at her? That’s Lily. She wants to be friends.”

Ian bends down, holding his finger out, always wanting to be friends with every kitty that he sees. “Hi Lily.  Do you want to be friends?” She does a coy rollover just out of his reach and we all laugh.

Dave has returned with a small pink book in his hand. “I just want to read something for you, Carol. In addition to being your neighbor, I’m also a preacher down at St Luke’s. I think I told you that but I have something here that I think will help you.”  He opens up the small pink book and takes a breath. “Let us bow our heads in prayer.” Cici follows the command. Ian and I glance at each other and shrug, bowing our heads in slight compliance. Dave starts to read something about the body as a temple and taking doctor’s advice when it is good advice and healing quickly and the Lord will help us with all of this if we only give ourselves over to Him….

Whenever I hear this idea of giving over myself to the Lord, some one that I don’t even believe in, mostly because I’ve never seen any evidence of him but also just because I wasn’t raised this way, I have resistance to this command. The last couple of nights I’ve been watching a show on Netflix called America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Many of the cheerleaders are extremely religious and always talk about how they just give their lives over to Jesus and if He deigns to give them a spot on that cheerleading squad then so be it and if He doesn’t, well then it is in His hands. They will accept His will.  I suppose I just feel like this is a cop out to our own personal responsibility; that we have our own will and our own choices that we make in our everyday lives and in the longer scheme of things. But today when I listen to Dave and how earnest he is with this prayer, I can’t help but be moved by his genuine caring over my broken wrist. He really does seem to want to help me and since this prayer and God are his way of helping, I will go with it.

He finishes the prayer, “Amen,” he murmurs.

“Amen,” we all repeat.

“Thank you for that, Dave,” I say. At this moment, I really mean it. It is sweet of him to come out and read me a healing prayer. It can’t hurt, right? And who knows, it might help!

“Oh, you’re very welcome, Carol. I know how hard it is and I hope that this helps. You take care of yourself now, okay?”

“I will,” I say.  Ian and I start to walk away. Cici is back in the garden working away in her monkey mode while Dave ambles back into the house, the Little Pink book clutched in his large calloused palm.