What We Share

I have not always been this way, living alone in a small apartment at the top of an old building, but though I have lost nearly everything, I still have words I can share. It’s the young woman. The one who moved into the apartment next to mine, she has helped me remember what is important.

At first, when she came into my life, I was upset. You see, she is a music teacher, and her students are all beginners. She tries to teach them to play the cello. The sounds come through my kitchen wall, starting in the morning and not stopping until the afternoon. I tried to ignore it, but how? Finally, I knocked. She answered, months ago, back in the fall, and I explained that I was her neighbor and that I could hear the students playing all day. I explained while I stood in the hallway and while she stood in her doorway. When I finished, she looked at me, and I waited. Then she invited me inside. “I was having tea. Please come in,” she said.

So what could I do? I had to go in.

Her apartment was even smaller than mine, and she was the only one that shared a wall with my apartment. So I was the only one who could hear the sounds. She brought me through the living room, which had two plain, wooden chairs and two music stands, and into her kitchen where she poured me a cup of tea. She said, “I’m sorry about the...