a lunchtime epiphany

At lunchtime I often take my book down to the City Library to read. During winter it's the only warm and comfortable place where I can read in peace without having to buy something. I love it there - sitting amongst shelves of books, people around me reading, studying or quietly conversing; it's a good place to escape to.

I went down yesterday and found a little spot in the library's gallery on the mezzanine level. As I was reading, a small old lady shuffled past me. With her bent body, white seaweed hair and intensly black eyebrows, she looked like an eccentric bag lady and perhaps she was. She reminded me of my grandmother actually, who, I suppose, for all intents and purposes, was a bit of a crazy old bag lady. I loved her for it.

I peered over the top of my book to see her park her trolly and remove several layers of tattered woolen clothing, before seating herself before the library's shiny black piano. I watched her knarled hands, contricted with arthritis and age, touch the keys. And then she began to play. I know very little about music, and less about piano, but the music that she drew out of that instrument was the kind that you felt in your insides - the kind that feels like a flock of birds in your chest that are trying to fly out.

I watched her crooked body rock back and forth with the music, watched that mane of hair falling across her face, watched her creased hands move across the keys and watched the subtle expressions of disbelief in people's faces as they paired the sound with the image of this woman.

I walked back to work with a smile on my face and a little less fear of growing old.