The Old Woman
Every time I visited the park, she was there. As ancient yet comfortable as she looked, the rough bench she sat upon could very well have been placed there just for her. Always she sat, those frail ankles crossed, legs wrapped in a beige woolen blanket.
I tried many times to follow her steady gaze from a distance. Her secrets stumped me. The world spoke differently to her, and I was deaf. Her lounging eyes absorbed her surroundings as a collector admires his trove. No, not that exactly. She looked upon the birds and squirrels and trees as a grandmother enjoys to watch her grandchildren play. The crease above her cheek looked softer than skin, like folds in her blanket.
The old mother would laugh quietly, tossing crumbs to the family of pigeons gathered around her. I couldn’t quite catch her whispers. Those dull birds watched every movement she made, eyes darting to and fro. They listened to her sounds, and clucked something softly in reply.
Young joggers and elderly couples passed her by without a glance. They must have somehow known they did not belong, for they never lingered in her path. But I sat, perched on an uneven picnic table, watching from a distance and substituting words for what I could not understand.
For several years I have come to this park. Sometimes weeks or months pass before I find myself wandering through those oaks again. Odd, how I never remembered her all those times in between. The old woman vanished from the earth, only to reappear again each time I stepped onto that winding trail.
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