My neighbor, Helen, was 78 and had lived alone for years.
\nShe was quiet, kind, and usually spent her afternoons tending flowers in her backyard.
\nThen a young man started showing up several times a week.
\nAt first, I assumed he was a grandson or caregiver.
\nBut after a few visits, I started hearing loud shouting through the wall.
\nSometimes Helen shouted back.
\nI became increasingly worried.
\nOne afternoon, after hearing another burst of yelling, I finally walked over and knocked on her door.
\nThe house immediately went silent.
\nA few seconds later, Helen opened the door.
\nShe was wearing boxing gloves.<\/p>\n
I just stared at her.
\nThen the young man appeared behind her holding padded training mitts.
\nHelen burst out laughing.
\nHe was her grandson.
\nAfter a recent fall, her doctor had encouraged her to exercise more and rebuild her balance and strength.
\nNormal workouts bored her, so her grandson had started teaching her light boxing exercises.
\nAll the shouting I had heard was him encouraging her while she practiced.
\nHelen smiled and said, \u201cI knew somebody would eventually think he was trying to hurt me.\u201d
\nI apologized for interfering.
\nShe shook her head.
\n\u201cNever apologize for checking on someone.\u201d
\nThen she handed me one of the gloves.
\n\u201cSince you\u2019re already here,\u201d she said, \u201cyou might as well join us.\u201d
\nThat became the beginning of our weekly workout routine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My neighbor, Helen, was 78 and had lived alone for years. She was quiet, kind, and usually spent her afternoons tending flowers in her backyard. Then a young man started showing up several times a week. At first, I assumed he was a grandson or caregiver. But after a few visits, I started hearing loud …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10441","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\/10441","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=10441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10443,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10441\/revisions\/10443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}