Fascinating!

Today for the first time I’m aware of, Margie didn’t know my name. She welcomed me warmly, but she was uncertain why I had come. 

While we were having coffee, her son Dennis phoned from Spain. Or he had been to Spain and was back home, she wasn’t sure. Something about Spain. She told him she was out, having coffee with—

“Excuse me, what’s your name?” 

I told her. She told him. She listened to him for a few moments but then seemed to lose the thread, hung up without saying goodbye. Or maybe he had hung up. She deferred to me politely,

“Thank you for being so patient.”

I said it didn’t take patience. I said in a few years, if I go on living, I’ll be just the same. Only not as cute.

“Who’s cute?”

You are. 

“I don’t want to be cute.”

Oh, I said, pulling the camera out of the bag, what would you like to be?

“Fascinating!” She threw her hands up in the air. I snapped the photograph.

I said she IS fascinating.

“No, not really,” she laughed. “But life is fascinating. It keeps offering us surprises. Are you an artist of some kind?” 

On the way back to her apartment by our usual route, she observed, “I’ve never walked on this street before. Aren’t the trees here wonderful!”

Yes, I said. Yes they are. She was seeing trees as if for the first time. As if she had been blind to trees for nearly a hundred years, but suddenly here they were. Trees. Full of rustling leaves. Perfectly marvelous.