When I Am An Old Woman

When I Am An Old Woman

Doris and I are having a bit of a tiff.

She’s very polite at first, asking me to come in for coffee.

I help by carrying the cups, while she reaches for a swirly glass bowl filled with cookies. The style looks like it came from Murano.

“Have a seat,” she invites, indicating a Louis XVI chair upholstered with smoky blue brocade.

“Oof!” I exclaim involuntarily. The chair is uncomfortable. Its pretty oval back is a smidge too convex, preventing me from leaning back. The seat is hard, and too shallow.

“Something wrong, dear?”

I squirm a little.

“It's the chair, isn't it? I wanted you to see what it's like. You've given me some things, you know, that are too fancy for my taste. Come and sit on the couch! It’s nice and comfy.”

She pats the cushion beside her.

I grimace apologetically and scoot over to the practical twill couch. Doris has draped it with a handmade quilt, which I can see is very old. 

“This is beautiful! Where did it come from?” 

“Oh — Irwin’s mother made it, for a wedding gift.” She strokes a section of the interlocking ring pattern, and I notice the thin gold band on her hand. It has a distinctive patina that only comes from years of wear.

“Don’t you think it should be stored away? What if it gets damaged?” 

I don’t tell her that I’m concerned about causing the damage. I might spill coffee, or leave cookie crumbs that would cause grease spots…

“This quilt was made to be used. I could put it away in the cedar chest where it will be respectfully viewed once in a while, or I can use it and enjoy it every day.”

I can't argue with that.

“Ah… that feels better!” I sigh, settling myself next to her. “I’m sorry, Doris. I guess I was trying to make an elegant room for you, instead of a comfortable one.”

I take a sip of coffee. It’s very good. I tell her so — and then feel strange, because I’m the one who chose the brand of coffee she uses.

“Now, that’s a pleasure!” The corners of her eyes crinkle above the bone china coffee mug. “Quality coffee is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. Have another cookie.”

“Thank you. They’re delicious!”

They are. Light and airy, but with a satisfying crispness. Just sweet enough, with a trace of tartness.

“Doris — ”

She sighs, and picks at a loose thread on the quilt.

“That’s another thing. Can’t you come up with a prettier name than Doris Fogarty?” She looks mournfully at me.

I am implacable.

“No, that’s the name you’ve been given. I imagine that your parents chose the name Doris, and then you married Irwin Fogarty.”

“Ah. You imagine. That’s the problem!”

She sounds suddenly petulant. I don’t know what’s gotten into her.

Doris may be a figment of my imagination, but she’s developing a mind of her own!

I remind her that, really, she just came into being a few days ago — and she’s supposed to go along with my plot.

She says it’s a privilege of her age that she should be answerable to no one.

She’s fine with being eighty-six, but she believes that her advanced years should allow her more latitude in her behavior.

I feel as if, even though she’s an elderly woman, she has a duty to me to behave in a certain way. After all, in a manner of speaking, she’s my child. My brainchild.

She gently reminds me, “You’re the one who considered making me into a petty criminal, hiding behind — and I quote you — ‘a veneer of respectability’.” 

She makes air quotes. Little old ladies don’t do that – do they?

I reply that the idea was an attempt to make her story more exciting, and I’ve abandoned it as unrealistic. The notes have been deleted. The petty criminal will have to figure in a different tale.

“I don’t need quite that much excitement in my life now, dear,” she agrees. “I had plenty of it in my younger days, when Irwin was in the diplomatic service — ”

At her age, that remark could be put down to dementia — but I know she’s sharp as a tack. 

“Doris, you know that’s not true! Irwin sold coffee bean sorting machines!”

She looks down at the floor for a moment. She seems melancholy, and I feel bad for contradicting her. She’s no worse than I, trying to conjure up a more exciting past.

“I can’t write that Irwin was in the diplomatic service — there are records of those things.”

She looks up, smiling now. 

“I suppose you’re right. He was a good coffee-bean-sorting-machine salesman, too. And a good man. Thank you for that.”

She reaches out and pats my hand with her crepey, liver-spotted one. Her fingertips feel cool.

“You miss Irwin,” I realize.

“Eat your cookie,” she replies, looking away – but not before I see the sheen of tears in her eyes.

“You miss Irwin… but you have fond memories of your life together.”

“Yes,” she sniffles, wiping her nose with a delicate batiste handkerchief.  Which she then puts aside, murmuring, “Oh, bother. Now I’ll just have to wash it. Can’t you let me use a tissue instead, dear? So much more practical!”

I find myself apologizing again.

“I think I’ll have to start the story over, Doris. I’ll take away that stiff blue chair and give you whatever you want in place of it. I’ll give you a box of tissues for every room, and you can put your hankies away in the cedar chest.”

She claps like a little girl.

“Oh, marvelous, dear! I know I’ve just – as you put it – ‘come into being’ quite recently, but I’ve already started feeling a bit … irrelevant, shall we say? It’s like this quilt, you know,” she nodded, smoothing the varicolored fabric tenderly.

She pauses, and I wait. She seems to be lost in a reverie.

And then I understand.

Doris is like that lovely old quilt: crafted with care, a creation that can still bring pleasure, not ready to be put away out of sight. 

She breaks out of her contemplation. 

“Oh, excuse me, dear. I was woolgathering… Do you know a poem about being an old woman wearing purple?”

Yes, I know it. It’s a poem about growing old ungracefully.

I believe it mentions — along with wearing purple — learning to spit.

And cultivating all sorts of other audacious behavior.

But then…

The poet decides that, maybe, she ought to start practicing while she’s young, so people aren’t “too shocked and surprised” when suddenly she’s old and starts to wear purple.

Do I know the poem? 

I nod — silently, because I want to give Doris the last line.

Doris, with the wisdom of age, says nothing more about the poem.

“Have another cookie, dear.”

~~~~~~~|

(Acknowledgement: “Warning”

© Jenny Joseph, SELECTED POEMS, Bloodaxe 1992.)