Conversations with strangers.

Tonight, as I am taking the number 48 home from work, I see an old lady with a beautiful sari.

Her skin glows despite her age against the vanilla white sari she is wearing, and my eyes notice first the delicate flowers embroidered along the edges of her sweeping dress, then the gold bangle around her tiny right wrist that seems to have become an extension of her skin over the years. Her hair is pulled back in a grey bun, and she looks around the crowded bus calmly. You can read some faces and know that the stories that toss about beneath them are angry, sorrowful, empty, or painful, and I read hers to be none of those.

I want to meet her eyes and tell her that I think her sari is lovely, and I want to ask her what her name is, if she is somebody’s grandmother, mother, wife or lover. I imagine her to appreciate the compliment of her dress, as all women would do. I imagine her to tell me her name, and comment about the rain, or the noisy air conditioning on the bus, or my tired face. I imagine her to tell me stories. I imagine her to tell me that some people I meet will be beautiful like brass vases, that some will be made of stone, and that some will have hearts with walls that are thinner than the lace on the hem of her sari. I imagine her to say that some nightmares will be dreams I will not shake off for years, and to remember that my broken heart will heal and be broken many times over again, sometimes by the same person, and sometimes by someone I do not know. I imagine her to remind me that the day always ends, and another new one always comes right after, and that this is the most important thing anyone can tell me.

She says none of these things, of course. Before I can meet her eyes and smile at her she is swept away, off the bus, off into the rest of a story that I will now never hear. But I hope that when I am 70, when some tired 20-something year old tells me that my dress is pretty, that I can tell her these things.

Ok! Enough reflective thought! I’m going to watch Invader Zim now and eat peanut butter cups!