soporiphic ruminations: my next door neighbor

she is old. i have seen her on three occasions.
1. sarah needed a place to lock her scooter up. we live in a lovely area but around these parts, lovely does not entail safe. our landlord, a wonderful woman, warned us to keep any flammable objects off our front porch and gave us specific instructions as to how to unlock the various chains and padlocks that lead in and out of our back porch. this was our introduction to our neighborhood, spanish town. i’ve been meaning to post pictures, but i haven’t has the inclination to drive to a place that will develop them, yet. anywho, the place is really lovely but not very safe, but in comparison to the area across the street, it’s like we live in a medieval fortress town. still, sarah needed to tie up her scooter.
the fence next to our driveway is actually the property of our next door neighbor. our landlord suggested that we go over, introduce ourselves, and ask if we could lock the scooter to the fence post. we went around to the back of her house to find the door slightly ajar. we rang the bell and after a few moments a slight older woman in a nightgown and coke bottle glasses answered the door, with a huge smile on her face. we skipped right to the introductions by briefly telling her our names and that we had just moved in next door. before we could say anything else, she immediately began to relate stories of all of the previous tenants of our place and how they all seemed to stay for just two or three years. she seemed awfully puzzled by this. we told her that they were most likely graduate students and were primarily here for the education. she smiled at us. then she began in on a story about how she used to live in the house on the other side of her. the house she currently lives in once belonged to a woman who was older than her and during this woman’s declining years, our neighbor cared for her on a regular basis. when the woman finally passed away, our neighbor inherited the house and all that was in it. which included a plethora of antiques. she invited us in to take a look at them but we politely refused and asked for a rain check. we were on our way out and had just stopped by to introduce ourselves and to ask a question. before we could ask, however, she told us that ever since her husband passed away (he was a driver of a concrete truck, and a very good one at that. one day, as he swerved to avoid someone that had stopped illegally in the middle of the street, he hit a huge pothole and his truck flipped. he lived for about another year but was in pain the whole time. he would have killed the person in the car in front of him, but managed to avoid it and in so doing, killed himself. she never said that he was a hero, but in her eyes we knew he was) she had made a living selling the antiques that she had inherited. we told her we would simply have to take a rain check, and proceeded to ask our question.
she said that that would be fine, and then walked into the yard with us. it was a sunny day. she remarked that her daughter told her that she wasn’t aloud to go in the sun because of her medication. we could tell that this bothered her. she led us around to the side of the fence and pointed to the place that would be best for us to keep the scooter. in that time she also informed us that her daughter stayed with her roughly three to four days a week. just to visit. and to take care of her.
2. it was a cloudy day. i saw her in profile. she was staring into the highway that runs parallel to our street. she stood for a minute before she turned and went inside.
3. it was overcast. our neighbor and her daughter were salting for slugs. they seemed to be meticulous about the lawn. it is nice. the house which it encircles is grayish with years of dirt and dust from off the highway and cracked. but the yard is immaculate. i watched as they leaned down close to my car which was on my driveway. i tried not to stare, but i was worried that i had parked too close to the lawn, possibly on it, and that they would be mad. after they went back inside, i went to inspect my car to find that it was a good foot from the edge. i was relieved. i went back inside...
a day or so later, sarah went to get on her scooter. we’ve been biking most places and avoiding motorized transportation unless necessary, for the most part. she came back inside with an exasperated look about her. she looked more hurt than angry, but there was definitely anger there. she said that her scooter had trouble starting...and that the key had trouble turning...and that when she pulled the key out of the ignition, she found salt on it.
had we offended our neighbor? surely not. unless...unless something she said to her daughter made the daughter feel the need to take some sort of revenge on us. but for what? what had we done? maybe they were both really religious, and the fact that we were living in sin made it so that they felt they should meet out some sort of punishment on us. maybe the old woman told her daughter that she had taken us outside to show us where to tie up the scooter. the daughter, realizing that we had taken her poor mother out of the house when it was sunny out, decided that we should pay for endangering her mother and decided to pour the salt then. or maybe something else happened. but that was the last time i saw her. sarah tried to knock on her door. the windows were open. it was a sunny day. her daughters car was in their driveway. no one answered.