I want to tell you about my neighbor Soel, who has no idea what she looks like to the rest of us.
It started, as near as I can tell, about twelve years ago. She was already giving then, she had always been giving, in the small practical ways that most people's generosity takes: checking in, carrying things, remembering what people had mentioned wanting. But the light didn't come from that. The light, when I began to notice it, seemed to correlate with the specific kind of giving that costs something. Not money. The kind that requires you to give something you were also using.
I didn't say anything to her. I didn't have the language for it. What would I say? Soel, you glow when you do certain things? She would think I was being sentimental, which she has no patience for. She is practical, level, faintly skeptical of effusive language. She would thank me and find a way to close the conversation.
By last year the light on her hands was clear in ordinary daylight. I had seen strangers slow down when they passed her on the street, children edge toward her without seeming to intend it. She attributed this to being old and unthreatening, which she found mildly funny. I didn't correct her. I'm still not sure I could explain it in terms she would accept.
Last Tuesday she came over with soup she had made for my cold. She set it on the table. Her hands in the afternoon light. I said thank you. She said it was nothing, just soup, she had made too much anyway. She left. The light was still in the room for a moment after she closed the door, the way light stays in the eye for a second after you look away from something bright.
I don't know what she would do with this information if she had it. I don't know if she would want it. What I know is that she has been marking herself for twelve years and cannot see the marks, and that this seems like either the worst thing about the condition or the best.