Maddy and Me

Here we are in a new year, with  Maddy, a wonderful young woman whom I have come to know over my years here and who is now a neighbor. We met the other morning in Gilpin Park filled with its gum trees and gullahs, gray and pink crested parrots who graze the dry grasslands. Maddy has undertaken to work out with me and coach me in the ways of boxing at pads. My boxing name is Stocky Jo which I am. When Maddy told some of her friends she was boxing with me, they couldn't believe it, she said. I answered, because I am an old Bronx fem. No, she said. Because you are 73.