There’s a little bit of joy, mercy, wisdom, and luck here for everyone, with an extra measure for new subscribers and readers. Maybe it will even be your “ten-penny day.”
Joy still lives on my street
We bought our right-sized house eighteen months ago from a 90-year-old woman named Joy. Our new next-door neighbor asked me, “Are you the daughter?” when he saw me there before moving day. Disappointed, he had hoped to convey his best wishes to the former homeowner, Joy. He didn’t have a chance to say good-bye and give her a hug her before she left.
All our new neighbors loved Joy. The couple from across the street told me they missed seeing Joy tending her flowers in the front garden or coming across the street carrying a loaf of homemade banana bread or plate of cookies. Every spring she invited neighbors to pick peaches from heirloom trees, which she and her late-husband transplanted from North Carolina to New Mexico in the early 1980s. Our next-door neighbor, Kathy, witnessed the trees being planted and benefitted from their bounty.
I was definitely not Joy. Would I bring honor to her legacy? I was still recovering from cancer treatment, busy working from home, and not into gardening. I loved to bake, but not in 95-degree summer heat. I’d have to find my own way to be neighborly.
Walking with Mercy, 2024
On a recent day, after working at my desk all morning and into early afternoon, I needed to be be outdoors in the winter sun. jacket, gloves, keys, phone with pre-selected podcast… and out the door at a quick clip. I was hitting my stride, quickly gaining on a woman who was moving slowly and carefully. Hearing my footsteps, stopped and turned. I was about to stride past, throwing a pleasant “hello” over my shoulder, but stopped when I recognized her. She was the petite older woman with pony-tail hair who greeted passerby with a friendly wave and sparkling smile from her visible corner house. I had never seen her use walking poles before. Now she beckons me closer. I paused the podcast and asked her name.
“My name is Mercy,” she said.
Mercy!
We walked together under the brilliant blue sky, praising the snow-dusted mountain’s beauty. I learned that her male canine companion of 15 years died on the very day Mercy surrendered herself to the orthopaedic surgeon to replace a vertebra and fuse her spine. Heartbroken at first, she now realized she had been given the gift of worry-free healing. “He’s in a better place, and now I can travel,” she said. “At 80, I have more places to go than time to see them all!” As we rounded the loop, she asked which house was mine. I pointed down the street.
“You probably knew the woman who owned the house we bought. Joy?”
“Oh, yes. I knew Joy! She was lovely.”
What are the odds, living in the same neighborhood as Mercy and Joy!
Lucky Pennies, 2002
An L5-S1 spinal fusion necessitates a slow, steady recovery, whether you’re eighty, like Mercy, or forty-three, like I was. Armed with a back brace and walker (different decade, different city) I made my way down the street and around the block, a little further each time. The first week, I kept my eyes on the pavement at my feet, careful to avoid the odd screw or bottle cap. The next week and one street over, I tested my strength and balance to acquire a shiny penny. Letting go of the walker, I squatted (notice, I did not say “bent”) and reached for the coin with a successful groan and grab. When I got home, I set it on the counter and proclaimed to no one, “Today is a one-penny day.” After that, every time I walked, I ventured further and with more confidence. Almost every time I found random pennies (sometimes even a nickel or dime) in the road. “Today was a five-penny day!” I told a friend on the phone. On a shiny, ten-penny day, I decided it was time to ditch the walker for the walking stick. Things were looking up.
I told Mercy that story as we walked our loop. “Ay, Dios mio! Who do you think was leaving all those pennies for you?!”
Someone Makes Little Green Apples, 2024
One of my other neighbors, Pat, reads this Substack. In fact, he’s the inaugural paid subscriber. I don’t know why, except that we had talked about poetry a few times.
“I like your energy,” he wrote in the comments when he first subscribed.
One day, weeks before I met Mercy, I happened to see him out on his driveway. I went over to say hello and to thank him for the last batch of pie-worthy green apples from his tree.
“Where have you been? Haven’t seen you!” he said.
“At my desk. Writing. Just now coming up for air.”
“Glad to hear it. The world needs to hear your wisdom.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“I do. Go write some more!”
The Wisdom of Solomon, 1992
Years ago, when my kids were little, we lived in graduate-student family housing while my husband attended seminary for a year.
Upon returning from the local Middle Eastern deli, I pulled the car into our designated space in the underground parking structure. I unbuckled my four-year-old son’s car seat and grabbed the bag of dates, tabouli, and gata bread as he hopped down. I quickly pocketed my keys and shut the car door, accidentally trapping my right thumb in the closed door as it latched.
For my son’s sake, I muffled my agony while tears streamed down my face. I mentally willed him to stay by my side, as I could not have run after him if he wandered into car-park danger.
Fortunately, our Nigerian neighbor, Solomon, came down the stairs on his way to his car, noticed us, and offered to help. I was deeply grateful, but also embarrassed. I asked him to retrieve my keys, which meant reaching into my fitted jeans’ front pocket. He did so without a word, unlocked the car door, and picked up my son. I followed behind as Solomon carried him upstairs to our front door and unlocked the apartment door. I ran to the bathroom. Solomon found Rhoda, his wife, and told her to come with an ice pack and bandage my thumb while he distracted my son with some toys in the living room.
Later that day, after most things in life had returned to normal, I knocked on Solomon and Rhoda’s door. He answered and I thanked him, again.
“You are welcome, my friend. In Nigeria we say, ‘It is your neighbors who save your life.’”
The Last Sweet Bite, 2001
Different city, different decade, different apartment complex.
My neighbor, Patti, was a sexy, too-young widow, coping with a life of grief and pain. Seriously injured in a car accident, Patti endured several surgeries that left her in need of prescription pain killers, which led to addiction. By the time I met her, she was sober and attending AA meetings. She was also full of fun and fireworks, a sparkler in her own right.
I, however, was the stubby candle burning at both ends—teaching two classes, completing my dissertation, living with my teen-aged daughter. I was newly divorced, my daughter and I both adjusting, with varying degrees of success, to being roommates. The best thing about the apartment complex was its name, Casa Placida—calm, serene. Untroubled, which I was not.
Concluding my dissertation was proving difficult. In the final chapter, I argued that historical and contemporary Native American women’s literature invited a multigenerational dialogue through community, identity, and resistance. Writers like Tapahonso, Silko, and Blaeser—poets and storytellers, novelists and playwrights—conversed on the page with readers and critics, alike, in personal and universal themes.
But the manuscript felt incomplete. I wanted to conclude the academic argument with a personal reflection on how I came to study Native American women’s writing in the first place and why I was drawn to the power of creating identity through story and place. In the preface, I talked about my experience living on the Navajo reservation for a short time, leaving behind Christian ministry, and finding my own identity as a scholar. I needed a complementary bookend.
Little did I know, it would knock on my door.
EPILOGUE, Albuquerque 2001
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,
while we are laughing and crying,
eating of the last sweet bite.
- Joy Harjo
Several weeks ago, my neighbor Patti stopped by to visit. She had been cloistered away in her apartment, which doubles as a recording studio, for days on end working on some new material around the same time I was finishing the dissertation. Diet Coke in hand, she started talking before her feet hit the entryway, entertaining me with her latest escapades—adventures in sober living, single motherhood, and singing for Jesus. We laughed about how our mothers don’t understand the difference between answering machines and voice mail, and how when we turn off our phones to work at home, our relatives think we’re out having a good time. Then she asked about my writing, so I showed her the two-inch thick, black, three-ring binder labeled Dissertation: Working Draft.
“Oh, God-in-Heaven,” she exclaimed as she turned the pages, “This is wonderful! I’m so proud of you—”
Suddenly, she was quiet, reading. I left her sitting at the kitchen table while I made some tea. When I came back, Patti was still absorbed in the words; I’d never known her to be silent for so long. Finally, she gently fingered the last page of the Preface.
“Oh, Andrea, I know what you mean.”
Had the world ended in that moment, my life would have concluded with what Harjo calls “the last sweet bite”—there at my kitchen table, meeting another human being soul to soul. There is no better way to end.
Thus ended my dissertation, but that was only the beginning of my rich writing life. The stories continue, in my neighborhood and yours.
Love, love, love. You have a talent for tasty tidbits that lead a reader down the breadcrumb trail!
As always, reading your work brings me joy. Thank you.