One step ahead of you here—ran into my ex at the store this week and he asked what I was up to…we were at a grocery store so it seemed obvious. Instead of saying something normal in response (maybe “oh just finishing up work and figuring out what to make for dinner!”) I instead nervously regaled him with what I was making for dinner, what ingredients it required and as things really went off the rails, insisted he should try the recipe sometime. Confused silence followed. I walked away wondering what I’d done in a past life to deserve not being born with one singular ounce of small talk proficiency.
Thank you for these prompts!!! Here’s what came out for me…..
She wore a powder blue lounge suit with an intentional crinkle, collared shirt and pull-on pants. Skechers tennis shoes were on her feet, the kind that don’t have to be laced. Her silver-white hair was pulled back, like it’s always been pulled back. A bun at the nape of her neck.
Despite rarely or never leaving the townhome she’s lived in since the farm became too much for her, she wears diamonds on her fingers and lapis earrings on her ears. She gets around the townhome with a walker now.
“Can you believe I will be 93 in March?” she would ask. At this stage of her life, the conversation repeats, every 30 minutes or so, as I know it will for me if I’m blessed to live so long. “Can you believe I will be 93 in March?”
Aunt Kathleen taught high school English in East Texas for 27 years and never had to send a student to the principal’s office. She had to collar one of her students in the hallway and bring him back to her classroom after school, she told me. She made him finish an assignment so he wouldn’t fail.
She is a military wife and mother and a proud American. She loves nothing more than my Uncle John, who taught me to ride horses and feed baby cows with a bottle. Uncle John, who taught history at the community college and never raised his voice. He and my husband discussed history for hours while my children jumped in the crunchy leaf piles at the farm.
Aunt Kathleen speaks proudly of how he flew in Vietnam and evacuated soldiers that he’d been told were too risky to save. She speaks hopefully that she will be reunited with him in the afterlife and believes it will be so.
She says things like “well, my glory!” and “scared the living lizards out of me!” She asked “why in the Sam Hill did I say that?” She was always so proud of my being a doctor and, every time I talked to her, she wanted to hear about my pediatric career.
This time, however, she looked across the small kitchen table at me. Her face was thinner than I remembered. We were separated by a bowl of plastic fruit and a vase with silk flowers. “Now are you a teacher, Julie?” she asked. My heart broke a little as I answered, “No, I’m a pediatrician in Houston.”
“A doctor? Oh, my. How did you get to be a doctor?”
We showed her how the phone could call up a song — any song she wanted to hear. My mom, her sister, suggested the Battle Hymn of the Republic, so I found it on my phone and pushed play.
She looked stunned for a moment as the music filled the room. I’m not sure how many different places she had heard or had sung that song, but the experience of hearing it over the plastic fruit and silk flowers transported her.
I could see it in the focus of her gaze, in the tears that ran down her cheeks as she sang. Her mind cleared for the two minutes it took to drop her voice into the familiar alto harmony and sing with the voices from my iPhone speaker.
She knew every lyric. “Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord….”
In those moments, as she sang in her kitchen, her memory was as clear as a mountain stream. She did not miss a note, nor a word. It was an ordinary moment that became extraordinary.
“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword. His truth is marching on. Glory, glory Hallelujah…”
The mind is an amazing thing. This strong, sweet dignified woman who can no longer remember some details of everyday life was back in the 1960s, or 1980s, or some other decade long past. It was as if she were watching the screenplay of her 93 years as she sang. The memories were released in her tears.
The song ended and she put her hands on the white tablecloth with green stitching. “Well,” she said. “That was something else.”
One step ahead of you here—ran into my ex at the store this week and he asked what I was up to…we were at a grocery store so it seemed obvious. Instead of saying something normal in response (maybe “oh just finishing up work and figuring out what to make for dinner!”) I instead nervously regaled him with what I was making for dinner, what ingredients it required and as things really went off the rails, insisted he should try the recipe sometime. Confused silence followed. I walked away wondering what I’d done in a past life to deserve not being born with one singular ounce of small talk proficiency.
HAHAHAHHAHA. Yes. This. But you did it right despite the cringe nature of this interaction I think.
Thank you for these prompts!!! Here’s what came out for me…..
She wore a powder blue lounge suit with an intentional crinkle, collared shirt and pull-on pants. Skechers tennis shoes were on her feet, the kind that don’t have to be laced. Her silver-white hair was pulled back, like it’s always been pulled back. A bun at the nape of her neck.
Despite rarely or never leaving the townhome she’s lived in since the farm became too much for her, she wears diamonds on her fingers and lapis earrings on her ears. She gets around the townhome with a walker now.
“Can you believe I will be 93 in March?” she would ask. At this stage of her life, the conversation repeats, every 30 minutes or so, as I know it will for me if I’m blessed to live so long. “Can you believe I will be 93 in March?”
Aunt Kathleen taught high school English in East Texas for 27 years and never had to send a student to the principal’s office. She had to collar one of her students in the hallway and bring him back to her classroom after school, she told me. She made him finish an assignment so he wouldn’t fail.
She is a military wife and mother and a proud American. She loves nothing more than my Uncle John, who taught me to ride horses and feed baby cows with a bottle. Uncle John, who taught history at the community college and never raised his voice. He and my husband discussed history for hours while my children jumped in the crunchy leaf piles at the farm.
Aunt Kathleen speaks proudly of how he flew in Vietnam and evacuated soldiers that he’d been told were too risky to save. She speaks hopefully that she will be reunited with him in the afterlife and believes it will be so.
She says things like “well, my glory!” and “scared the living lizards out of me!” She asked “why in the Sam Hill did I say that?” She was always so proud of my being a doctor and, every time I talked to her, she wanted to hear about my pediatric career.
This time, however, she looked across the small kitchen table at me. Her face was thinner than I remembered. We were separated by a bowl of plastic fruit and a vase with silk flowers. “Now are you a teacher, Julie?” she asked. My heart broke a little as I answered, “No, I’m a pediatrician in Houston.”
“A doctor? Oh, my. How did you get to be a doctor?”
We showed her how the phone could call up a song — any song she wanted to hear. My mom, her sister, suggested the Battle Hymn of the Republic, so I found it on my phone and pushed play.
She looked stunned for a moment as the music filled the room. I’m not sure how many different places she had heard or had sung that song, but the experience of hearing it over the plastic fruit and silk flowers transported her.
I could see it in the focus of her gaze, in the tears that ran down her cheeks as she sang. Her mind cleared for the two minutes it took to drop her voice into the familiar alto harmony and sing with the voices from my iPhone speaker.
She knew every lyric. “Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord….”
In those moments, as she sang in her kitchen, her memory was as clear as a mountain stream. She did not miss a note, nor a word. It was an ordinary moment that became extraordinary.
“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword. His truth is marching on. Glory, glory Hallelujah…”
The mind is an amazing thing. This strong, sweet dignified woman who can no longer remember some details of everyday life was back in the 1960s, or 1980s, or some other decade long past. It was as if she were watching the screenplay of her 93 years as she sang. The memories were released in her tears.
The song ended and she put her hands on the white tablecloth with green stitching. “Well,” she said. “That was something else.”
Thank you so much for the mention! (and for the company in Rome) xx