Tea with the Neighbor's Mother

My next-door neighbors are a young Indian couple whose mother came from Chennai to stay with them for six months. She doesn't speak much English. I don't speak any Tamil. We became friends anyway.

It started when I waved at her over the fence one morning. The next day, she handed me a steel cup of milky, cardamom-scented tea over the fence. The day after that, a small plate of murukku. Then an invitation, by gesture, to sit on her porch.

We sat there most mornings that summer. She showed me photos of her grandchildren on her phone. I showed her my roses. She taught me to say "romba nalla," which means "very good," and I said it about everything.

When she left in December, she gave me a hand-embroidered handkerchief. I gave her a jar of my rose petal jam. Her son told me she said I was "her American sister." I feel exactly the same.