My Little Old Ladies
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Lydia with my son in her apartment.
Mrs. Murray, who lived in the trailer next to ours, was the first little old lady in my collection.
Even the air inside her place was tinted yellow. I can still picture her there in the stale dark, hunched over like a plant bending back toward its own roots. A blanket covers her knees; an oxygen tank wheezes beside her; a cigarette glows between her fingers.
To my five-year-old-self, Mrs. Murray seemed as old as the earth. It was hard to believe we were even the same sort of thing.
My brother and I spent a lot of time in her dim kitchen waiting for our mom to get home from some temp job or another. I don’t recall any particular warmth between us, but I do remember that whenever we knocked at her door, she always opened it.
We tried to repay her for that kindness. Mom snuck us in to redecorate with fresh wallpaper and hand-sewn curtains. We scrubbed and scrubbed at the decades of nicotine layered across every surface. I was surprised to discover that underneath, some of Mrs. Murray’s things weren’t yellow, after all.
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Nell, on the other hand, was warm and kind-faced and fresh. Her place smelled of sugar cookies and rose-scented hand soap. Treasures were tucked into every corner: skeins of yarn, boxes of vintage beads, crocheted dolls with squishy plastic heads.
There were romance novels stacked behind the wood-burning stove in her den –– the cheap grocery-store kind, with bare-chested men and impossibly buxom women fawning at each other on the covers.
I spent my ten-year-old summer sprawled across the soft shag in her mauve bathroom devouring every single one of those romance novels with mounting horror and delight.
Who knew such incomprehensible words could be made to hang together? A revelation. Even today, the unexpected whiff of rose-scented soap has the power to send the phrase “Out sprung his hot, pulsating member” looping hysterically through my head.
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There has been a little old lady for every stage of my life. They make the best of friends.
They’ve been where you are now, and can usually guess where you’re headed next; Mine have seen and done things I could never do:
One got a PhD in physics and married a fellow physicist so she’d have someone smart to talk to. “The handsome dear never was as clever as me, though,” she confided.
One traveled to London, got roaring drunk, and ended up completely naked in a public bathroom with her foot stuck in a toilet bowl. “I wanted to explain myself to the nice folks who dislodged me, but I didn’t have an explanation. Still don’t.”
My newest little old lady often stops by to complain about the widowers in her bicycling club who pester her for dates. “They’re all too slow,” she says, “and I’m too old to ride my breaks for a man, ever again.”
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But it’s Lydia I’ve been missing lately.
Lydia was my first friend in the Netherlands. She showed up at our door with a bag full of toys, to introduce herself; she first tried in Dutch, then in Italian, and then in French. As the confusion bloomed across my face, she laughed: “English? Of course.”
By that time, Lydia had reigned over our neighborhood plein for fifty years. Many interesting people had come and gone. A famous Dutch painter had once lived in our apartment, she told me: a quiet, handsome man. When he moved to the Hague he gave her one of his paintings for free.
“Or rather” she twinkled, “I did not pay him for it with money.”
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Every Dutch person shares the same primary love language: scheduling appointments. Lydia was no different; I often found notes tucked into our mailbox that stated, simply: Vridag, 13:30. I quickly learned they translated to, “be home and have cookies.”
On her visits, Lydia taught me all about traditional Dutch etiquette: never show up without an appointment, never be late; never stay longer than ninety minutes, eat everything you are offered but do not ask for more, do not be pushy with physical displays of affection.
Then she would stay for hours, eat every cookie in my house, and absolutely smother my children with kisses.
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Lydia survived the Dutch famine of World War II. Her father died young; her husband died young; her beloved son died at 40 after falling off a ladder. When I met her, most of her friends were dead, too. She loved making new friends but hated how difficult that had become in old age. “I don’t feel I am so very old,” she said, “until I pass a mirror.”
One afternoon, when the two of us were drinking instant coffee and eating cookies over her kitchen sink, she launched into one of her many stories: She was a young teenager, on a day trip to Amsterdam. “I had a new skirt; it was such a nice shape,” she sighed. “All the men on the train stared and stared at my legs. You should have seen my beautiful legs.”
She paused and recalled vaguely, “That was the same weekend the Nazi occupiers snatched my father off the street and threw him into prison.”
Wait, what? I pressed. What happened? Why? Were you with him? Did they hurt him? How long was he in prison?
She waved my questions away like flies. “Don’t be annoying. That’s not the story I want to tell. I want to talk about my beautiful legs.”
That was peak Lydia: she wouldn’t let me hover over the suffering, inspect it too closely, define her by it. She would remember her life on her own terms.
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The last time I saw Lydia was the day we left the Netherlands. We had just locked the door to our little light-filled apartment and were waiting, bereft, for a taxi to take us to the train station.
Lydia hobbled over in the cold winter rain.
“Farewells are important,” she told me, for my final lesson. “Never let the people you love depart without someone to wave them off.”
And she was right, as usual. As we pulled away, it meant everything in the world to look back and see her there, waving with all her might.
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Someday, I’ll be a little old lady, too –– if I’m lucky. I’m almost ready. Here are my top five little old lady takeaways so far:
Always open the door when children knock.
Make sure to have a stash of cookies, some sexy books, and a comfortable bathroom.
Stop slowing down just so that men can keep up with you.
Hold lots of space for your gorgeous legs –– but none for Nazis.
Show up to wave goodbye; it matters.