My neighbor, a quiet woman named Linda, started copying me. First, I painted the fence a cheerful yellow. The next week, hers was the same. I installed a quirky new mailbox. She had an identical one a few days later. I started doing yoga on the porch—she joined in, mirroring every pose from her own porch.
At first, I brushed it off as coincidence. But it kept happening.
It felt… eerie. Like she was watching me too closely.
One afternoon, I’d had enough. I marched over to her porch, ready to ask: What is your deal?
But she didn’t act defensive. She didn’t act surprised.
Instead, she handed me a box.
Inside were letters. Dozens of them. All addressed to me. One for every year of my life.
“I’m your mother,” she said quietly, her voice trembling. “I… I’ve been here. I never stopped watching.”
She told me she was autistic—sensitive to noise, easily overwhelmed, and at the time of my birth, not able to care for a child. My father placed me in foster care, and she hadn’t fought him. She was scared. But she never forgot me.
She bought the house next door.
She tended the land.
She wrote me letters she never had the courage to send.
I stood there, stunned. Confused. Hurt.
But as I opened the letters—some shaky, some barely legible, some filled with beautiful, aching words—I felt her love. Her regret. Her hope.
It wasn’t the reunion I’d dreamed of. No tearful hugs. No Hollywood ending.
Just two awkward people in mismatched lawn chairs, sipping tea and trying to figure out what family looks like… now.
We’re still awkward. Still figuring it out. But we’ve got yoga, shared mornings, and a yellow fence between us—once a sign of confusion, now a symbol of connection.
Funny how something so simple could lead me home.
