I'm walking down a street near our house, coming home from my sludge/trudge/run. Straight ahead of me (the street ends in a T) I see something white in a window, moving slightly now and then. Is it a cat? I can't tell. As I get closer, I think it might be something hanging in the window.
Finally, I get near enough to see (I know. At this point I really have crossed over to window peeper. At least I'm across the street.) It is an older woman, in her 80s, sitting in the sunshine at her kitchen table with her profile facing me. She has a white cap on her head (a nightcap? bonnet? It looks very Vermeerish and is the mysterious bobbing white object). She has a paintbrush in her hand and a canvas on a table easel in front of her and is deep in concentration painting the winter scene spread out before her through the window view of the park behind her house.
Walking the rest of the way home, I indulge in imagining stories of her life (did she paint her children? learn it as girl?). But I know this: I want to be that kind of version of me in 50ish years.
