Crone of the Year

We are approaching the old age of the year. Autumn is in the air and winter is coming. We are all on death row. Every morning I sit and write in the last patch of sun in my yard before the shadows take it away. Honey and I sit squinting in the warmth. Our maple tree is nearly completely orange! I have been sleeping ten hours a night.

Recently I met an eleven-year-old boy at a performance. The boy is a classical pianist and he had rosy cheeks and was wearing a suit and tie. His father said he practices twice a day; pre-dawn and evening. The boy was an old man in a child's body. He told me he has three music teachers and has been playing since he was six. Maybe when he is 40 he'll get to be a kid, like what happened to me! The hostess for the event had a wild face. Her pale translucent skin was taut and smooth and her helmet of gray curled-and-sprayed hair was an eerie halo. Only later did I realize she must have had a face lift. Her 75-year-old skin was tight as a drum across her jaw bone. There was no extra skin on her neck; in fact the muscles and arteries on her neck looked like the exposed drainpipes under my kitchen sink. Her hands were arthritic and her knuckles were frozen into a slightly bent position. It scared me when I reflected on her face. Why hide your age? Wouldn't you like to set a good example for those of us who will be old soon too?

I just saw the Chagall Man walking through the parking lot of the elderly high rise. His back is so bent over he looks like a walking question mark. He walks in little clumpy steps, determined and animated, wearing a dark green baseball cap and a cobalt blue fleece pullover, white pants and white sneakers. He focuses completely on the ground while he walks. Maybe he has always been an old man. My friend's daughter just turned 21 and we celebrated with her. She went from being a kid to an elegant, elongated, graceful woman in ten years. I am now the age my mother was when I turned 21.

I am enjoying the quiet of closed windows and neighborhood children indoors at school. In one hour everyone will be out again. Our neighborhood schools start extremely early, 7 AM, and the kids walk home at 2 PM.