Shortly before my husband and I married, we purchased a 1953 starter house in a soon-to-be-declining neighborhood. Our neighbors to the west were a seminary student and his wife, a deaf education teacher. To the east, a former Hell’s Angel who worked as a nurse. Across the street lived Shirley.

If Gladys Kravitz and Mayberry’s Aunt Bea had morphed into a single elderly female, the result might have come somewhat close to this 80-something dynamo. Equal parts endearing and irritating, Miss Shirley lived with an ancient terrier named Penny, an animal that looked less like a dog and more like what happens when a bad wig takes a trip through the washing machine. She loved that unkempt animal almost as much as she hated cats, which was unfortunate as many people on our street had two or three. Shirley’s unvarnished hatred for all things feline was well established throughout the neighborhood, so rather than repel them, her ire almost seemed to draw the enemy closer. Seldom a day passed that you didn’t see one or two cats strolling boldly across her rooftop while she stood out on the lawn angrily whacking a metal saucepan with a spoon as a warning.

Some days, Shirley might barrel across the street and ring the bell unannounced in order to deliver some crucial piece of neighborhood gossip or simply report the crimes against humanity committed by one of our cats. Her habit of watching television with binoculars due to some degenerative issue also afforded her the ability to pay keen attention to everyone’s else’s business without leaving the comfort of her home. One moment she was sofa bound enjoying the considerable drama of “General Hospital” and the next she was scribbling furious notes on the make and model of whatever car happened to park in front of someone’s house. Shirley’s powers of observation could be both blessing and curse.

Word on the street was that, in her heyday, Shirley had been employed as an underwater welder. This was exciting news and while the strength and confidence that job must have required were still observable in our neighbor, the skillfully “put together” image it also summoned was definitely at cross purposes with the way she appeared on a daily basis. Shirley’s untamable corona of hair was consistently flyaway and her ensemble of choice was usually one of those cotton snap-front house dresses favored by tv housewives. The problem wasn’t so much the worn fabric of said house dress, but rather, her habit of standing on your porch steps (or sometimes on the sidewalk) in DIRECT and unforgiving sunlight which revealed the startling outline of her nether parts. Make no mistake, Miss Shirley was in no way daft or forgetful. She just seemed to be waging a personal war against undergarments.

Once she learned that the seminarian and his wife next door were expecting a baby around the time that we were pregnant with our first, Shirley’s joy could not be contained and she was full to bursting with advice–especially regarding how to fight against maternal weight gain. Her method as she told it was to stand naked in front of a full length mirror with a paper bag over one’s head (with eye holes cut out) so as to judge the body objectively and decide a plan of attack. In fact, Miss Shirley startled our neighbor one afternoon by demonstrating this very technique without warning the poor girl beforehand. It wasn’t an image any one of us could unsee in a hurry. She was an unrepentant citizen of the era during which the bodies of expectant women were open to public critique and comment. She frequently bade both Liz and me to spin around so as to better prod and predict how and what we might be carrying. I remember her tapping my backside and then my belly with all the focus of someone diffusing a bomb before telling me I would have a boy. As it happens, she was correct.

My last memory of Shirley was the day I opened our front door to find her standing on the porch with an old waffle iron in her hands–its long fabric-covered cord trailing uncertainly behind her. “Do ya like waffles?” I responded in the affirmative and when I opened the screen door she thrust the appliance into my hands. “You’ll probably need this then,” she said before walking back down the steps.

At some point, Liz and her seminarian moved to another state where he would serve as a minister. The Hell’s Angel left as well to make way for new renters we didn’t like nearly as well. One of Shirley’s kids–a son–began visiting more and before too long, she was whisked away to assisted living or a similar fate. We wanted a different area with a better school for our boys and sold our little house at a loss. As is often the way of things, the whereabouts of our old neighbors from back in the day is a mystery I might never get to solve, but the the fate of the waffle iron is no secret. It’s alive and well and–two weeks ago–created a gorgeous breakfast for our young granddaughter. I think Shirley would be thrilled.