THE OLD LADY IN THE WINDOW

      

         

This picture of a bygone era is the latest to stream in from cyberspace, triggering a random memory from long ago – and a message for today.

Perhaps the best part of living in the Bronx was the millions of kids available to play with in the neighborhood.  Apartment buildings were surfeited with children, many of whom were my friends.  All we really needed to pass the time was a spaldeen, a little pink ball produced by the Spalding company. (Spalding morphed into spaldeen.)  I rarely left the house after school or on weekends without bouncing a spaldeen on the concrete streets, or at least stuffing one in my pocket.  Walking into the building’s courtyard without a spaldeen, was comparable to leaving the house without one’s pants.  Handball, stoop ball, Chinese handball (otherwise known as slug or King Queen), stickball, four box baseball, and even hit-the- penny, filled the hours, days and years of our childhoods.  On Creston Avenue our favorite was off the point.  

Playing ball in the Bronx, was nothing like the suburban picture above.  The curbs on both sides of the street were bumper to bumper with parked cars, and yes, cars driving across our ball fields was an ongoing annoyance.  But we managed.

The building directly across the street had a long concrete facing about three feet high which was perfect for nine-year-old boys playing off the point.  Naturally we had to play between parked cars and had to endure cars making their way down the street.  Our field of play was dictated by the pattern of parked cars.  We needed a space about four feet wide.  Most of our attempts to hit the point resulted in grounders, but if a guy hit the point just right, the spaldeen would fly all the way across the street and hit the building for a home run.  Sometimes the ball would end up on a fire escape, or even worse, in the old lady’s house.

 Her apartment was on the ground floor.  She spent most of her time sitting at the window watching the world go by.  She wore glasses and had short, straight gray hair.  Because she often chased us away, we tried to play between parked cars not directly across from her window, but sometimes we had no choice.

 One fine day in June we were playing off the point with my brand new spaldeen and sure enough, someone hit a home run right into the old lady’s window, something like a basketball swishing into the net without touching the rim.  It was one of those rare times she wasn’t actually sitting there. 

That broke up the game.  I wanted my brand new spaldeen back. I had paid a full 25 cents for it!  But what could I do?  Ring her bell?  People said she was a witch.  She was always yelling that the ball would hurt her.

I went up to her door and rang the bell hoping she wouldn’t answer but knowing that she would because she never left the apartment.  I was ready to run full speed back to our apartment which happened to be on the same floor.  I gauged the distance, estimating that I could be at our door in maybe three seconds.  My life depended on it.  Why am I doing this?  It’s only a stupid ball.  I braced myself.  She opened the door and looked down at me.  “Yes?”

I didn’t want to actually look at her face, so I announced to the wall that my ball went through the window. 

“Well, come in,” she said.

I was surprised she had a normal speaking voice.  I expected a high, shrieking cackle.  I quickly glanced up at her.  She wasn’t angry at all.  “Come in,” she said again.

The apartment was neat as a pin and spartan in appearance - hard wood floors, a few throw rugs, a piano.  “Well, let’s look around for it,” she said.  I was relieved but still on my guard.  Why was she being so friendly?  Was this going to be a Hansel and Gretel thing?  I didn’t want to end up as a gingerbread cookie in somebody’s oven.  “There it is,” she said, “behind the piano.” 

I didn’t know what to do. What if I got trapped behind the piano?  It was big as a tank. “Well, go on, dear, get your ball.”

Dear?  The old lady called me dear, like she was my grandma. I carefully went behind the piano, but kept glancing back at the old lady in case she made a move toward me.  She didn’t move at all.  She just stood there, seemingly immobile, looking at me.

 I retrieved the ball and headed for the front door.  “Thanks,” I said, nervously squeezing the spaldeen.  She didn’t say a thing.  She continued to stare silently at me.  I looked passed her to the piano and to the big window.   

Still, she said nothing.

She just kept looking at me.

“Well,” I stammered, “thanks, really thanks.”  As an afterthought, I added, “I’m sorry.”

 By the time I got back to the street, she was sitting in her usual place, staring out at nothing. 

 At the time, I wasn’t sure why I was sorry.  A) Because the ball had gone in her window?  B) Because I was sorry to have bothered her?  C) Because she was making me nervous with her silence and staring?  D) Or did I recognize on some level that her life was empty, lonely and without purpose?  The answer, as we say in multiple choice questions is E) All of the above.  Especially choice D.

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Here in the twenty-first century, loneliness seems to be rampant and deadly. We have access to the world in the palms of our hands, yet loneliness is epidemic.

Here on Substack, I interact with many people, some of whom post anonymously.  We share thoughts, ideas, politics, and coping with life. We restack and cross stack. I have no idea what they look like, if they are married, where they live. If I have a question, Shustack’s AI answers instantly. No humans needed. There is nothing particularly wrong with this, the technology is fantastic, but it adds to humanity’s increasing isolation in this brave new world.

 In 2019, writer and fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Kay Hymowitz wrote the following in City Journal.

 “Loneliness, public health experts tell us, is killing as many people as obesity and smoking…Germans are lonely, the bon vivant French are lonely, and even the Scandinavians – the happiest people in the world, according to the UN’s World Happiness Report – are lonely too.  Former British Prime Minister, Theresa May, appointed a ‘Minister of Loneliness’…consider Japan, a country now in the throes of an epidemic of kodokushi, roughly translated as ‘lonely deaths.’  Local Japanese papers regularly publish stories about kinless elderly whose deaths go unnoticed until the telltale smell of maggot eaten flesh alerts neighbors.” 

Evidence confirms the deleterious effects of loneliness.

 Two depressed urban neighborhoods in Boston were found to have particularly high mortality rates due to cancer.  Dr. C. David Jenkins reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that cancer mortality rates in these areas were thirty-seven and thirty two percent higher than the statewide average.  The study found no link between cancer-causing agents and the high incidence of the disease. The study noted that these neighborhoods were populated with large numbers of single women, divorced people and old folks living alone.  The neighborhoods were characterized by poverty, unemployment, and overcrowded apartment buildings. 

The high cancer rate is caused by a lack of human contact.  These high-risk neighborhoods were inhabited by people living alone. 

In The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness, Dr, James Lynch came to the obvious conclusion: “…human loneliness is among the most important causes of premature death in modern America.”  Studies for virtually every cause of death – suicide, cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, automobile accidents, or heart disease – the incidence of premature death was far higher among people who lived alone than among those who were married.  Married with children live longer than married without children.  Married with children contract less cancer than married without children and singles.

A study at Brown University of 20,000 people who died between the ages of thirty-four and seventy-four found that men living alone had a mortality rate ninety-four percent higher than married men.  However, the likelihood of death dropped dramatically when the unmarried men lived with their families and were heads of their households.  The obvious conclusion is that human contact and the responsibilities of caring for one’s family are life-sustaining.

Man #1. “Is it true that married men live longer than singles?

Man #2:  No, it only seems longer.

Jokes aside, loneliness is a burgeoning problem. Something I learned at the age of nine.

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