Where'd the monkeys in my hair go?

When I was a little girl, I befriended a little old lady who lived several houses down on our street. She was in her nineties and rarely left her house. I don't even remember how I met her now. I took to heart the lessons I learned in church and checked in on her from time to time. She was on Social Security and barely scraped by. She was very frail and could hardly walk to the end of her driveway and so the mailman came to her door. It was a small town and people did things like that. I remember the trouble she had lifting her arms to comb her long, silver-streaked gray hair. She had crocheted toilet paper roll covers that made her tissue into dolls with full skirts. Once, I "helped" her make pasta. I remember how she stood, her walker next to her and her table before her, and with slow deliberation, cut the layers of pasta.

I don't remember how it tasted or what else we did with it. Just the act of her impossibly small frame leaning over the table to cut it. I wanted desperately to help her. To make her less alone. To listen to the stories she surely had to tell. But mostly, I ended up watching soap operas and waiting for her to speak. I don't think I could ever make pasta from scratch again. If I did, it would surely be filled with salty tears and nostalgia for an old woman I never got to say goodbye to, who likely took her best stories to her grave.