Who was Neighbor Helen?

The OG Neighbor Helen (1927-2015) was my paternal grandmother, Helen. She lived her whole life in Detroit, and she never met a stranger, as they say. She was known to strike up conversations with her neighbors down by the mailbox, wearing what she affectionately referred to as her “foundation,” which in those days amounted to a girdle. The word “brassy” was minted to describe broads like my grandma. She never drove, so she would complete her daily beat as an Avon lady on foot, which would take her to the mall, beauty shop, diner, or anywhere people congregated. Her questions could make a person blush but also feel seen: she could get people to share things that maybe their closest family didn’t know. And while she enjoyed knowing privileged information about people, she wasn’t a gossip. She could occasionally use the truth like an exacto knife to slice through idle talk and redirect the conversation toward something more important and pressing. In this way, my grandma taught me how to live within Midwestern culture but also subvert it every once in a while for a good cause. 

My own Neighbor Helen ways were heightened and revealed to me during the pandemic when our world got so much smaller. A good friend and I lived in the same building and found ourselves looking askew down alleyways and sidewalks when an unexpected item or person would appear (“What’s that? Are you seeing this??”). We would pass the time this way, making and exchanging close observations of those around us, realizing somewhere along the way we’d become more curious about the far-away world served up by the algorithm than the one that buzzing with activity right under our noses.