free to be

My neighbor, Rachel, was quite a lady. A woman of wonder. She had this larger than life personality-the kind that welcomes strangers off the street and bakes for all the neighbors; the kind that thinks nothing of prancing around outside in a night gown, all hours of the night and day. With her deep, raspy voice from far too many years of chain smoking, we’d delight in her story telling—even when we already knew, verbatim, how that particular story ended. Rachel had a love for gardening. Flowers bloomed year round in the small plot of land in front of her home. Stiff joints and creaky bones made it increasingly difficult for her to stay stooped over in her garden. Therefore, in the springtime, we had this system down where she would insist on financing all of the mulch for our adjacent gardens and Kyle and I would be the work horses. She’d stand on her porch and shout orders at us as we moved plants to and fro, yanked weeds, and mulched the flower beds. When the skies grew dark and the thunder clouds rolled in, we could always peek out our front window and there she’d be: sitting in her white rocking chair, in the shelter of the porch, appreciating the spectacle of the storm in all of it's glory. Any time a rainbow graced the horizon, she’d come knock on our door and all three of us would stand together, in the middle of the yard staring up at the sky. She always said, “I hate to bother you but something like this is just too beautiful to experience alone”. And she was right. I remember once, after a snow storm, I glanced out the window again just in time to see her pick up a handful of freshly fallen snow and eat it. This is a strange thing to watch a full grown adult do but somehow, it was fitting and not at all surprising. The wonder of it all.

We lost Rachel one warm, sunny spring day when the skies were blue and the garden was blossoming. Copper Hill, as we knew it, would never be the same. And fortunately, neither would we.

Today, her white rocking chairs grace our porch. The single guy who moved into her home doesn’t know a thing about gardening and Kyle and I are doing our best but that doesn’t say much. The wind blew in a storm today and it reminded me of her. Sometimes I think I feel her in the air. I wonder how many rainbows we’ve missed without the knock on our door? But, days like today it all comes back: her larger than life personality and the warmth and wonder of it all.