Nina’s neighbor owns half ofJerusalem three malls eight apartment complexes three factories and a park. When she passes in her SUV she waves but she’s sad.

“After a trip toAmericafor three weeks you’re sad?” Nina asks her.

Nina is religious; her neighbor who owns half ofJerusalemis not.

Nina’s neighbor’s mother just passed away and she’s sad but she’s sadder because her favorite daughter just got a new life and flew the coop.

She screamed at her daughter “You have to be at army duty you have to help me with the laundry you have to help me....”

But a woman who owns half ofJerusalemdoesn’t need her daughter to fold laundry. Or help her clean that much Nina deduces.

Nina’s neighbor is now crying in the car. And so is Nina.

She’s that kind of person; if you cry she cries.

The neighbor’s porch overlooks Nina’s and though it took them a few good years to even say hello they bridged that gap. Nina even took her to a Weight Watchers meeting. Everyone there was religious and that particular day for the first time ever the speaker decided to talk about something religious something that really turned off Nina’s neighbor.

It was then that the neighbor opened a bag of whole wheat diet rolls right in the middle of the lecture and started eating them to see if they were really as good as everyone said.

Nina almost slipped under her chair in embarrassment as her neighbor munched and swallowed.

“These are okay but you wanna go?” the neighbor asked Nina out loud.

That was the end of that.

“Good try” Nina told herself as she sat in the front seat of the SUV driving home thinking We’re just two different worlds.

But here she is again passing exactly at the time Nina takes out the garbage. And now she’s sitting in her SUV outside Nina’s house sobbing.

Nina cries too because she did the same exact things with her daughter when she moved out.

She yelled about the price of shoes when it was something else entirely that was bothering her.

She made a fuss about a sheet set when it was the feelings of neglect and abandonment that were niggling.

So Nina in a half-ripped tichel and her black-and-red bleaching skirt stands outside the window of the SUV while her neighbor cries. She cries that if her mother were still alive she’d tell her what to do. She cries that her husband doesn’t understand. She cries that “this daughter is the only one who always helps me.” And she doesn’t say it but she cries that she is all alone.

Nina understands because she has the same pains in the same places.

“It’s not the laundry” Nina says. “It’s just hard to let go.” She doesn’t know how her neighbor is going to take her straightforward approach.

Her neighbor cries even harder because Nina’s hit the spot. The spot of pain.

The neighbor is surprised that Nina understands such things. Nina catches a look in her neighbor’s eye for a second like Aren’t we so different worlds apart?

“Tell your daughter the truth” Nina says. “Tell her you just miss her and it hurts.”

The neighbor nods her head because when you hit that truth it speaks for itself. You can feel it.

Meantime a loud large garbage truck pulls up behind the car. Nina’s neighbor has to move her SUV.

Nina’s neighbor tries pulling over to say goodbye but the truck keeps crawling up closer behind her. Nina’s guess is that they hit the point of truth and more might have been too much. Each one got to leave with the point still strong and undiluted. They didn’t need to switch back to small talk over drawn-out goodbyes.

A little confirmation that truth works.