Rose-Colored Glasses

Back in 2006, I lived in part of a multi-family home in New Haven, a yawning, hundred-year-old house with hardwood floors and an exterior painted Pepto-Bismol pink. I preferred calling it rose-colored, but everyone else dubbed it “distinctive.” My penchant for those rose-colored glasses was now a need; my longtime boyfriend and I had split a few months before and I had few friends living close by. Early that summer, I met Rose.

The first thing I noticed was how strong she seemed, despite being, I guessed, close to 80. Despite the hunch in her shoulders and her too-slender frame, her gait was determined. I watched her stride next to the jalopy on the far side of my apartment’s parking lot. Noting her drab overcoat—in the middle of June—I wondered if she was homeless. I double-locked my door and clutched my purse closer to my side.

The woman crouched slowly and scooped a can of cat food onto one of several paper plates next to the car. I’d first noticed those plates a few weeks ago, had wondered about their purpose. Now it was clear: instantly, at least four cats popped from under the car and rubbed against the woman’s legs.

She was feeding the strays I’d started to think of as my feline neighbors, scattering under my car’s sweep of headlights at night. I knew the city’s shelters were overflowing and was happy that the lot could be home for these furry denizens, the half-rotted shell of that old car a shelter. I remember the first time I’d tried feeding them myself, pouring some Meow Mix into a plastic bowl. I’d been mystified that the cats weren’t eating it. True, they didn’t look that thin, and cats could be fussy, but still. I’d finally concluded they’d done their share of kitty dumpster diving in alleyways.

Now I knew the real reason.

I went off to work that day, and didn’t think much about the woman until I saw her again, this time on a Saturday. I soon learned she had a pattern, coming at the same time on weekday mornings, just before I left for work, and again on Saturday afternoons. “Hello,” she said one Saturday, while I was emptying the trash. I jumped. Despite having an outgoing persona at work, I could actually be quite shy, and private. At home, I liked to escape from the world. I rarely offered more than that terse, New England-style nod to the Asian neighbor who lived upstairs. I turned and offered that short nod now.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” the woman said.

It was drizzling.

But I grinned reflexively and nodded again. I wondered if the woman was trying to charm me so she could ask for money. Maybe money to buy cat food. “Do you work close to here?” the woman asked.

I stiffened. She wanted to know where I worked? “Fairly,” I said. “At a newspaper.” I told her the name of the weekly.

The woman introduced herself as Rose and said she worked at Yale. “It’s gotten harder now that my husband passed away a few months ago, but work is one of the things I still love to do, even though I’m pretty well past retirement age!”

I asked if there was anything I could do to help feed the cats. “Oh, no, honey. I’ve got it down to a system. I’ve been doing this for years.”

But I’d only just noticed her.

Rose must have noticed the surprise on my face, because she chuckled. “Oh, I’ve seen you around for a while now. You and that young man—how is he?”

“Ah, we broke up a few months ago. It’s fine—”

“Something ending is never just ‘fine,’ no matter how much it might seem so at first.”

I smiled despite myself. “I think you’re right.”

Rose asked me to go to lunch with her at a small Middle Eastern restaurant on the next block. Over the next few hours (yes, hours!), I learned more about her career at Yale. Her husband had been a scientist there. She told me about her three children scattered across the U.S., and the lack of company she had, now that a close friend had passed away, not too long before her husband.

The parallels were obvious: we were both alone, both grieving, both in need of someone to spend time with. And, until then, I’d never gotten into the habit of getting to know my neighbors. Although Rose spent much of her time volunteering at animal rescue organizations downtown, she lived outside the city, in a beautiful Colonial I got to visit when she invited me for dinner one Saturday.

My friends had teased me about it: 25, and spending my Saturday evening with a woman older than my grandmother. But I liked Rose and perhaps, even more vital, what Rose taught me: to shed stereotypes (even stuffy New England ones) and get to know my neighbors.

You never know when you might make a new friend.