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Shares
“Do you need a ride?” My brain said it, my mouth repeated, but now I needed to do more in order to communicate what words usually accomplish. My neighbor is sitting on the edge of our villages public water spigot; in her lap, a bright blue plastic bag of fresh picked oranges from a nearby tree. I have never seen her sit there. The few times I have seen her, she is casually walking the dirt road next to my half opened metal gate with marble steps leading to the front of my house. She makes sure to look my way to send a warm morning greeting when she finds me in my doorway, often broom in hands covered with yellow plastic gloves. The house is old and cobweb covered head to toe. Every day she has passed, I know she has been doing some chore or another. I can see it in her hands; wine bottles she rinses out, buckets she fills up at the public spigot. I feel she understands we are on equal grounds with the cleaning. We also share the one phase we both understand, “Bom Dia”, her language for good morning. Now it is close to evening but not dark yet. I give a simple “Boa Tarde”, good afternoon. Simple words, yet a smile can be sure to follow. I am in the village where I have slept for the last six nights. Many more nights will hopefully follow. I recently bought the house after one short visit. There are no cafes, no banks, no stores, just houses, little stone houses, most walls plastered white with red roofs in the little village of Alvem next to the river town of Gois. Every time I say the name of my new town the locals correct me. I was taught to think of saying Alvin, like Alvin and the chipmunks, but put the emphasis on Al and barely say n and don’t, I repeat don’t pronounce the m. It doesn’t have a part in this word other than holding the word up nicely when writing it. There is a dash over the letter e but most keyboards won’t account for that. American keyboards ignore the needs of the masses, the accented e does not matter in it’s little keyboard world. But the accent has a proper worldly place. It tells the person speaking to hold onto the e sound a little longer than usual. Right now I don’t have to hold onto any sound, I need motion. I point to my car, point to my neighbor holding the bag of oranges and then point toward the road leaving our village. She looks a little puzzled so I decide to mix it up a bit. I point to her, point to the car, then point to the road at the same time saying, “Ride to Gois?” She seems to understand, this time, as a giant smile comes across her face. Her heart beams. I can feel it. She takes my arm into hers and gives me a half hug. I feel we are telepathic with each other. I know what she is thinking,“This is so kind of you. You are a kind and caring neighbor and right now I love you for that.” I completely feel her love. We are sharing the essence of humanity. My tiny gesture of caring for her well being in this moment is rewarded in her giant gesture of sharing her beaming heart that will carry me for many days, maybe even a lifetime. I might be telling this story in ten years with the same sense of love I felt at that moment. I thank her for this but I also thank myself for being open to the observation of understanding how special and rare moments like this are. I am someone from a distant land that she has only heard stories about, stories that may of made me out to be a little hard to understand. Now she understands someone from a distant land to be caring and she seemed truly surprised and delighted by that. Her world just got a little nicer, my world just got a little bigger.