The best thing about her was her rice. Well maybe not the best thing but certainly one the kids and adults both loved. They would gather around, all the families, friends and neighbors like stray cats who have found a warm place to sleep in the cold night and a friendly stranger to feed them a bowl of milk. Only she wasn’t a stranger. Not any more. And she wasn’t a mother figure, even to the young children who gathered at her outside table eating her rice or crowded into her living room and played video games with her or loved her cats. She wasn’t really like an auntie either and she certainly wasn’t grandmotherly. She was just Ann, the kind neighbor with the endless warm rice and the inviting smile and a generous, loving heart.