My neighbor, Margaret, was 78 and had lived alone for as long as I could remember.
\nShe was gentle, quiet, and the kind of woman who always brought cookies over at Christmas.
\nThen a young man started visiting her several times a week.
\nAt first, I assumed he was a relative or caregiver.
\nBut after a few visits, I began hearing shouting through the wall.
\nSometimes Margaret raised her voice too.
\nI started worrying that someone might be taking advantage of her.
\nOne afternoon, after hearing another loud argument, I walked over and knocked.
\nThe house went completely silent.
\nA moment later, Margaret opened the door wearing boxing gloves.<\/p>\n
I just stared.
\nThen the young man appeared behind her holding padded training mitts.
\nMargaret immediately started laughing.
\nHe was her grandson.
\nAfter a recent fall, her doctor had suggested exercise to rebuild her strength and confidence. Her grandson had started teaching her basic boxing movements because ordinary workouts bored her.
\nThe \u201cscreaming\u201d I kept hearing was him shouting encouragement while she practiced.
\nMargaret smiled and said, \u201cI told you people would think something terrible was happening.\u201d
\nI was embarrassed, but relieved.
\nBefore I left, she handed me one of the gloves.
\n\u201cCome back tomorrow,\u201d she said. \u201cYou look like you could use some exercise too.\u201d
\nAnd somehow, that became our new weekly routine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My neighbor, Margaret, was 78 and had lived alone for as long as I could remember. She was gentle, quiet, and the kind of woman who always brought cookies over at Christmas. Then a young man started visiting her several times a week. At first, I assumed he was a relative or caregiver. But after …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10427,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425\/revisions\/10427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}