The 18-year pause

There is a certain kind of woman I am intimidated by: intellectual, postgrad educated, cultured, politically opinionated, and self-described as “spiritual.”

The fault is mine, not theirs, a stronghold solidified over years in the dark recesses of my soul—the germ, some irrational lie believed in childhood rather than held up to the scrutiny of the light. Phobia should have been nipped in the bud, by even a minimal exertion of courage.

But it wasn’t. And so, for instance, 37 years ago (I remember the very day) a woman moved into the house next door, and in our first conversation over the literal picket fence, she laid out, like a royal flush, all her superiority bona fides—family pedigree, University of Pennsylvania diploma, and vocabulary shibboleths.

I listened in outward calm but internally was succumbing to the familiar paralysis. I immediately knew something she did not, that this was going to be a long slog.

It turned out not so long a slog because she and her husband relocated after five years from their starter home to a posher part of Philadelphia. But it was messy and uncomfortable while it lasted, and when it did end, the finale was pyrotechnic. Our last exchange was in shouts over the telephone, she not being able to imagine that someone who considered herself a Christian could hold the abhorrent views I did.

That was a relief.

But not a victory. My husband once told me that if we sidestep the testings God places on our paths, we will find the same tests crop up in another form further down the road.

Sure enough, another woman moved onto the street, a house a bit farther down, and therefore more avoidable. When she introduced herself, I got that old feeling again. She was an accomplished musician in a Baroque ensemble, who had performed in castles in Germany; a former medical textbook illustrator; a Chinese- and Korean-certified tai chi instructor; in societal relations two degrees of separation from a famous person.

So when she inquired about good walking places in the neighborhood and I recommended the cemetery half a mile away and she chipperly suggested we walk together, I basically said I would get back to her on that. Have a little sympathy for my reasoning, dear reader: Why should I make a protracted ordeal of a doomed project when I can strangle it in the cradle?

In May I was handing out sample ballots at the township polling station when along comes this neighbor—this reincarnated moral testing—walking toward me with her husband. I greeted her by name, but confessed to not remembering her husband’s name, to which she said, “Yes, it has only been 18 years.”

“Eighteen years!” They walked on, and I was left to marinate in the confrontation of my cowardice.

My favorite insight from Jordan Peterson is that after 10,000 hours of clinical counseling practice, what he most certainly learned was that he has “never seen anyone get away with anything. Not even once. You may not always be able to connect the consequence with the choice you made back there, but be assured that there will be a consequence.” (Or words to that effect.)

It was raspberry season, so I got the idea to hold a neighborhood “dessert night.” Little did the 26 people I invited by handwritten notes slipped in their mailboxes suspect that the whole affair was conceived with one invitee in mind—the Baroque musician on the 200 block. The event met with middling success, but the musician was not able to come because, as she politely texted, her husband was on Day 8 of a serious hospitalization.

But this was my foot in the door. I prayed for her spouse and told her so. I checked in every few days (careful not to seem too weirdly aggressive) as his recovery was prolonged and she spent 11-hour days tending to him and advocating for him in a rehab facility. One day she contacted me and shared that though she looked “put-together,” she was exhausted and could use a hand stretching a fitted sheet onto her bed.

I happened to visit a local farm and returned with zinnias and left some in a vase on her back steps. She was pleased. Then in the middle of the night I remembered my stash of old 33 LPs in the attic, and on a hunch went up and located Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Baroque masterpieces by Handel, Bach, and Telemann. They sit here behind me on the table, awaiting the appropriate time to gift her.

I still don’t want to seem too pushy.