Marlene

She wasn't allowed to move for a  month due to deep vein thrombosis in her left leg.  Somehow she still looked fabulous, resting on her plush, steely blue couch, wearing a baggy t-shirt and sparkling, dripping earrings that make her smokey blue eyes sapphire.

She taught biology for most of her adult life. Now she's retired, renting out rooms of her two-story burnt orange building to all sorts -- US citizens, Germans, old Italian men, Nicaraguan models, Mormon missionaries and even occasionally a Black man. She is proud of the diversity she's maintained and keeps it a close-knit group, calling all the female renters "hija" and "amor".

Sometimes she'll lend out scissors, pots, or her kitchen and table for a neighborhood dinner.

The conversation will range from her troubles with learning English to her disappointment with the young empleada who cooks and cleans her home, to discussion of religion - a fragile subject that at any moment is likely to shatter into judgements and generalizations. She asks probing questions that are at times only thinly veiled criticisms or complaints.

But she also wakes you up mornings to tell you when the water has come back on after it had been away for days and she's open and kind to any visitors. And perhaps most important and thoughtful of all, she assists tenants in keeping out bugs called Chinches -- a little beetle whose bite, when left untreated, causes an illness that will kill its victim in later years.

She lives alone in her part of the house, not speaking much of husband or children, but gushes about her grandchildren.  The truth is that she has quite a history of love, as will we all. She loved a man and was not allowed to be with him; he was too poor. She married someone else. Had children with him. Life went on, but some mornings when she is looking in the mirror she wonders if she would have looked differently had she married the first man.

When the doctor told her she couldn't walk she took to the television, a situation that at once clearly bores her and lets her blissfully sink into the world of the rapidly changing images on her screen.

She doesn't own very many mugs, for some reason.  Coffee for more than 4 is an amalgamation of
holders - jars, cups, short glasses - anything that will hold the hot liquid that she graciously allows her guests to sweeten to their own liking, a privilege not too common when visiting with someone in their own kitchen.

You wish she really was your mother. Her terms of endearments have a grating effect on your heart after the first month of having them rolled out to you as you walk past her door. I am so far from my own mother, with her own blue eyes and her own earrings and pet names and judgements.

You are thankful for the flowers and long-leafed plants lining the narrow cement walkway that takes you to the rooms further inside. You are thankful for the security offered by this place. The privacy without loneliness. For Marelene's washing machine, her stories of travel, her curiosity. Her immediate and generous giving of love.