When the phone rings and I see her name, I pick up fast.

She was born in 1932, and she has the most honeyed and light way of saying, “Hello.” Slow and gentle and sprawling with interest.

This is the second call from her this afternoon, and I answer it warmly, “Hi again.”

She chuckles, embarrassed.

“Did you remember your second question?” I ask her.

“No!” she laughs a little more, and it’s a sweet sound. Playful, and stripped of any lingering shame. “I erased the number you gave me.”

When I give it to her again, she says, fondly, “I’ll be seeing you in late June, won’t I?”

The sound of her voice — hopeful, generational, timid and strong all at once — makes me feel a million little things. I say, “Yes you will, and I’m looking forward to it.”

“I am, too.”

Once, on a visit, I brought her a Heartleaf Philodendron plant, and she took it with frail hands and dangling bracelets and said, “I’ll kill this, y’know.” But every time I come back, there it is. More lush and striking than when it was first given.

She makes real fruit cocktail. Slices the peaches and the pears and adds pitted cherries and her own homemade juice: fresh squeezed lime and honey, she said, “Something else, I can’t remember.”

She sends me letters with her own photography of a time she lived in Alaska, pasted on cardstock. “Dear Chrissy” with perfect cursive, as if it were written above a ruler.

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