I have come to the conclusion that one of my best qualities is that I am a good listener. The older I get I tend to attract those who talk—a lot. Usually, they are women who are older than myself. They are widows, or divorcees. They have children, but they have set their children free to live their own lives. Or, their children, for one reason or another, no longer find them useful enough to spend time. They talk about everything. They talk about the movie they recently saw. They talk about Beyoncé and Jay-Z as though they know them personally. They talk about their neighbors whom I don’t know. About how, “Geraldine let that bad ass grandboy of hers kick the trash can down the middle of the street, and now there’s trash everywhere.” I manage to interject with a, “What?” “Really?” “You don’t say?” “Humph.”
They don’t understand why their son won’t have anything to do with them anymore; after all, they were only speaking their mind when they said they didn’t like his new girlfriend. They reminisce about how frail Daddy looked as he lay dying—about how they vowed to take care of him until the end. They talk about how good the shrimp were at Sara Lou’s back in the seventies, and how their sister is slowly losing her memory. They talk about all of these things without taking a breath.
Although they sometimes take me away from my ambitions and the undertakings I’ve begun, in order to, myself, stay relevant for as long as possible—I listen. I think I may be them one day, and I am hoping that someone will listen to me—to my stories. I will tell them about my first kiss in the basement of the church; and about how I once flew in a hot air ballon over Marrakech. I will explain how to cook collard greens with no meat, and how to make a pot of soup from scratch. And I will tell them how a tea made with stinging nettle herb will ease their seasonal allergies.
Old women have stories to tell. If we listen carefully, they have lessons to teach. Don’t dismiss them because they may not know how to friend you on Facebook; or because they wear pants with elastic in the waist. In between their anger, loneliness, sadness, or regret is the girl they once knew. But as we listen, and as we age, we must take our own anger, loneliness, sadness, and regret, see our own lessons; then roll them all into a ball and squeeze until all that is left is the joy of our youth and our survival. And we must trust that there will be someone there to listen to us talk about how fat Barbara’s grandbaby is.
Old women have stories to tell.
SPITTING OUT BONES 