Sunshine in April

As the weather gets better so does my mood.

My workload has lightened up (but 5 papers/projects are on the horizon, should get on that soon) as well so I've been taking some more time to sleep in and go out to eat meals.

The other day I was at Garden at the Cellar eating delicious truffle rosemary fries with S when I saw an old lady out of the corner of my eye walking in. Boston is full of characters so when she started yelling loudly I dismissed her as another one of those. However, after a few seconds I realized there was something about that raspy tone that reminded me of.. my grandmother. After listening more attentively to her cries of "pisa! piiisa!" I informed the waitress, who was standing there looking rather flustered and confused, that the old lady most likely wanted pizza.

S and I finished our meals and got up to leave right as the pizza arrived. Since Garden at the Cellar is a rather nice place, its pizzas are of the flatbread small serving variety and the old lady was rather confused.
"Bu yao zhe me xiao de, tai xiao, yao da yi dian de pisa! Da de pisa!" I got up and went over,
"Do you have any larger pizzas?"
"No... this is our only size" the waitress responded. I told the old lady as much and she looked surprise there was a stranger speaking to her in Chinese. The old lady insisted that she needed a larger pizza and asked me to tell the waitress this.
"Is it possible for her to return this? I'll take her to the Dominos down the road"
"Yeah! No problem." She was about ready to get the woman out of her hair.

I walked with the old lady down the block to Dominos, all the while she told me about her family, her life, and her quest for pizza.

The woman was 89 and her husband was in his 90s. Usually on Sundays her grandchildren, who all went to Beijing University, would bring her and her husband food. She never ventured outside. However, today they could not make it and so she thought she might as well go out on her own and get them food for the week. This was the only place they ever went though so she didn't know anything else. She also didn't speak english so that made getting around quite tough. She wanted pizza because, honestly, at this age the palate is so worn out there's no point getting good food! Any food will suffice. But she was thankful she had found a kind spirit in all of this.

Due to my poor Chinese I could only understand 2/3 of what she was saying and communicate 1/3 of what I wanted to say (maybe more like 1/5 since she was pretty hard of hearing), but seeing her gratitude at the end was worth all of the effort.
In the end, I walked away wondering if she would be able to carry the pizza box back with her to her home.

I hope her grand children will visit this weekend or whenever that box of pizza runs out.