I collect

I collect anecdotes like others might collect stamps. Of course, like any respectable collector, I’ve got the deep feeling that my collection is only interesting to me... but what the heck. I’ll share some.

The other day, while I was at work, a 93 years old lady made me smile. She was talking to me over the phone, has been talking for over an hour, about everything and nothing, she was happy and bizarre like only 93 years old ladies over the phone on a Tuesday afternoon can be. Having nothing more interesting than smiling to do that day, I decided to take the most of it. She was talking about her life, in English, in French, laughing. She was telling me that she wasn’t alone since her fridge was humming all day long. Oh, she wasn’t crazy, far from it; she only decided to take those daily annoyances for friends. She was having a ball humming to me the songs of her fridge, finding hilarious that I was trying to cover up my laughter. I have never seen her before but imagined her to be a tiny, funny lady, like a wrinkled 15 years old. She stunned me. I was unable to refrain from talking about her to my colleagues, but since they have seen so many different things over the years, they simply took my happiness to be lack of experience.

A month later, last Thursday, I was about to finish my day of work and run back home to sweet nothing, leaving the evening shift to someone else, when I saw this crowded waiting room... Being the nice person I am, and listening to my legendary bravery, I decided to see one last client before leaving.

Taking up the file, I say the person’s name and see coming towards me a very old lady, frail, laughing eyes, proud white hair, who ask if I am Esther. I reply that no, Esther is off for the night but that I will try and help her as good as Esther would. She takes my arm, pulling me down and whispers in my ear: « I’m sure you’ll be better »... I was already loving her.

She sits, begins to talk about her rent increase -which I am sure must have served as a pretext for her coming here because she is way to late to reply to it and she knows it- when it suddenly illuminates me... She is MY old lady! I look at her and say: I remember you! You were the one with the humming fridge! She is stunned and incredulous.
-remember me? When you see and talk to that many persons a day? You are Esther, then...

I say no, I am not, I am Hélène. She had confused my name with someone else’s. But remember clearly our weird conversation. And there she goes again. Her life. She was a pioneer. She has a family that still is very close around her, which stun me since mine is about 12 years of age and already falling apart. She looks at my hands. Notice that I don’t have a band. She tells me that, anyways, men these days are up to no good, only wanting a good meal, a good fuck and to go back home in the morning...! She promises me to find me : « a nice man », and that, by the way, the son of her grocer is available...

She tells me about my city, from the time when the women had to hide behind their husbands, behind their pregnancies and behind their counters. She tells me about her son’s death, at 24, which happened decades ago but still, she had tears in her eyes. She talks to me about the magnificent carpets in her apartment, about entire conversations that she had with strangers, about what she intend to do on her next summer trip, she talks to me as if I was sitting on her lap, her grand daughter or her friend.

She will stay for more than an hour, and during all this time, she wont say one thing worth to be noted in her file but everything necessary when you look for the meaning of life.

She was wonderful and I am sure that even if exactly 60 years separate us, she truly is, in reality, a 15 years old teenager, just a bit more wrinkled.