The sun was shining on her sitting like an old cat in a sunny spot on a quiet day. I’d seen them for years women on the bench. Sometimes with strollers some with wheelchairs.
As I passed I said hello.
I must have interrupted her stare at the shul across from the bench. The bench next to the park of slides and merry-go-rounds and memories. I could see she could hear the sounds of the park and the quiet of the old shul.
I said hello not because I knew her but I knew that look on her face. Poised but pained. Satisfied yet empty. The combination of opposing strands that can be woven only by elders from wisdom and experience.
She’d probably made peace and waged wars settled new continents countries and patches of grass. Grown her own tomatoes and cucumbers. Baked cakes for birthday parties. Ran to doctors.
I said hello as I was coming out of the doctor’s office the doctor our family has used for over 15 years.
The woman on the bench wore a camel hair coat. A year ago I wouldn’t have understood a coat in spring. I believed the rainier the better in Israel. The colder the more fun.
Not this winter.
Maybe there’s arrogance in that feeling of conquering a wild storm of being above the elements the rain the cold. Maybe it’s what drives us in youth. Maybe a tinge of humility is missing unlike in the face of the woman on the bench.
I could actually see the past pasted on her in her eyes — not sad not happy. The rich blend of disbelief disappointment and awe. Wondering how a whole life goes so quickly yet so slowly.
She could have sat on her porch at home but she may have decided I must go out. I must still go out. Thinking how she used to go out every day. Walk the hills push the strollers.
Or maybe her husband’s in the shul. And he finishes learning at noon and she waits for him and they’ll walk home slowly together to have lunch. And they won’t talk because they won’t need to talk. And people in the streets will nod in warm recognition and the sun will have that special shine on them as they move closer to home.
Or maybe she’s just come from the pharmacy and the bench looked too inviting. So she stopped. And sat. And drank up the sun and her memories.
When I was in the doctor’s office just before I saw her I’d heard all the coughing and went to sit in the side room I had always sat in looking forward to the rocking chair I’d rocked in for 15 years while waiting for appointments never really minding the wait because it was a chance to sit.
And now I looked in the room where the rocking chair was and it was gone. Replaced by a plastic chair.
I thought about the woman who used to come to our house when I had a houseful of small children. She was about 80 and alone. No children. Never married. Holocaust survivor. And she’d come to help me cook.
The truth was that when she came she always needed ten ingredients I usually didn’t have in the house. And I’d have to go out to buy them then she’d tell me how to cook them while she’d peel some potatoes. And then the children didn’t really eat what she’d make so I’d have to make a new dinner. So I slowly discouraged her from coming and she finally stopped coming. I felt guilty but justified because it wasn’t really helping me.
Well that was what I saw in the woman with the camel hair coat sitting in the sun on the bench. I saw that she’d know what to do. She’d know why that lonely woman really came to help me cook.
She’d understand the woman on the bench. —