This pink sunflower cake plate I picked up at a yard sale in 1981-82. At that time, my son Ryan was still very small and into the daily routine of afternoon naps. I learned that a ride in the car stopping now and then to look over a yard sale was acceptable for Ryan, he didn't really mind it and seemed none the worse for taking his nap in his car seat.

The day I bought this plate, it had been a sunny fall day. I remember it clearly because Cherie was with me that day. Cherie was my across-the-hall neighbor, a woman I had only recently stuck up an acquaintance with. Having lived in this apartment for a year, I would hear the coming and going of Cherie and her son John at different hours of the day and night. I knew she was a single mom, like myself, though her son was a high school student.

I don't exactly recall how we first met and finally began talking, but we did soon learn that we had a common interest in tag sales, auctions, rummage sales, flea markets and collectibles. Cherie didn't have a car and always took public transportation or walked everywhere. She was Italian, and looked the part, with long dark hair, attactive and intelligent. We soon took to doing certain things together using my car: grocery shopping and occasionally the Saturday tag/yard sales. We began to develop a friendship.

Cherie spoke with a New York accent and as we began to share our pasts I learned a lot about her. Having married young, Cherie had almost immediately become pregnant and had a baby. Somehow, she had acquired a certain intellectualism and appeal to the counter culture lifestyle of Greenwich Village in the late 60's and had chosen to divorce her husband. She exhibited a lot of disdain and resentment toward many things regarding her family (preferential treatment toward her brothers), and her exhusband (lack of sensitivity and consciousness). Her solution to those things that disagreed with her was to discard them, to ignore their existence.

As time progressed, I began to realize how truly strange Cherie was. For example, it was never clear to me how she had managed to move to Amherst from New York. Also, Cherie held odd jobs, usually never longer than a few weeks and yet she managed to survive, and I do not think she ever received public assistance, she was far too protective of revealing personal information about herself to even try that. Cherie's real name wasn't even Cherie, but rather Angelina, showcasing her Italian heritage. I had learned this by mistake one day when her mail was delivered to my address. I asked here how she had obtained her nickname, but she never answered me. Cherie had somehow managed to get an additional lock placed on her door without the knowledge of the the apartment building and was contrite and smug about her control. She absolutely detested anything she deemed a violation of her privacy or rights. For weeks a note was tacked to her door warning her son's friends to keep out of their apartment. John, being a true teenager, had them in anyway and I could imagine how livid Cherie would be had she known.

One day, Cherie invited me over to her apartment and I tentatively entered. There was a scant path leading from the doorway to the center of the room where she had arranged a couple of chairs around a coffee table. There were piles of things all over: years of Prevention magazines, fashion magazines, fabrics, antiques, books, odds and ends. It was near impossible to manuver to the center of the room, but Cherie considered it normal living, just too many things in a place that was too small.

A few months after Cherie and I had struck up an acquaintance we made an afternoon trip together to the local grocey store. Upon returning, we carried our groceries into the common hallway we shared and were struggling with keys to open the door when the man who made bi-weekly visits to spray pesticide trudged up the stairs. Though we asked him politely to refrain from spraying until we opened our respective doors, he rudely refused and proceeded to spray the poison all over the place.

I was furious and Cherie was also. After there we were, groceries and a baby and a toxic substance being sprayed. I entered my home and angrily called the company as well as the apartment manager to protest what had happened. Cherie immediately began to talk about filing suit against the company and I agreed. Agreed, that is, until I did my research. I learned the substance they used was not toxic at all, having contacted the appropriate department on UMass campus to inquire. The company sent me a written apology and ultimately all was forgotten. An attempted suit would never have made it to court and the possibility for an out-of-court settlement was a long-shot at best. I forgot it and went on with my life.

Cherie, however, did not forget it. Nor did she pursue it either. At that moment she stopped talking to me, forever. My action, or rather lack of action, had placed me on her list of the forgettable. Though I tried to talk to her, there was no redemption and certainly no foregiveness. There wasn't even a discussion: Cherie had made up her mind and that was the end of it all, our friendship and neighborly civility. I was carefully shunned and avoided at all times from that point on.

For years I have mused about this action of Cherie, questioning how one could make a definitive decision that is so hard and cruel, based on one small element of an overall relationship. It made me wonder what her family had really done to her, or whether it was simply her own interpretation of a very different kind of event. I resolved to never let my own sense of piety distort reality.

When I look at my sunflower plate I think of all this. I see the pink color and the representation of large, sunny, bright flowers on the transparent glass and what a crisp clear autumn day it had been. Then I think of Cherie, who remains dimly clouded, veiled by the real or imagined demons of her past, wondering if there is anyone who can meet the standards she demands.