old age is pretty
tabitha showed up suddenly on the eve of a golden autumn jewel of a day.
the child of my half-sister and her first husband. whose birth i awaited and attended with precognitive excitement. so much art was generated during the months tabitha was germinating. her birth was a thrill indescribable. i bought her first pair of shoes, tiny pink strawberry sneakers.
but then sis's marriage derailed after a few years, and the little strawberry angel-child moved to cincinnati. sis's 2nd marriage brought her out to wyoming, and gave her another daughter and 2 sons. but i only knew them through pictures and stories. and tabitha all but vanished in the melee of changes during those years. now and then she'd briefly touch base, like when she'd come back to stay with her father for a short time, but that didn't happen regularly. and at a few clan get-togethers after she'd gotten a car and could get places. no matter how much time or distance between connections, she always remembered me.
so we sat in the garden-room, listening to the fountain bubbling, splayed out on the pink saucer chairs, and it seems there is always some call for pink around tabitha. and she was talking so fast, catching her words was like cllnging onto the last car of a runaway train. she's flashing pics of her wedding a year ago and her trip to spain. so fast i could barely see them and had to ask her to slow down a few times. but her slow was still my fast. finally, i said something i'd heard my mother say to me "for me, you've got to go a little slower".
she did try, but at the speed of light everything flowed in a rushing stream punctuated by splashes, touching and lighting upon something, ever so quickly. and here she was telling me her younger sister was born well after the techno blast so she comes with devices built in more or less, which she said "makes her do everything really fast".
in comparison my mind moves rather slowly. i like to hang onto words and images a bit before letting them go. i mull at length, and tabitha mulls for a split second before getting onto the next plane.
anyway, i'm sure you know the feeling of "smiling inside", which i remember as a yoko ono contribution from some time in the 80's.