The Old Woman and her Tea
Saturday afternoon, the way home from Phoenix: big snowflakes drop-kicking me in the eyes,
zooming and wanting to punctuate this then, while still abuzz aglow --
rather than now, when it's faded and I'm tired bored slightly hung --
but, home, I dry-cleaned lubed my cycle and joined in, a bit belatedly, to X-mas party prep.
SO rewind to Phoenix Coffee, over two large dark and rich, finishing The Old Man and the Sea. Brew and book both beautiful.
And pain does not matter to a man.
...
Besides they do not bleed much. There is nothing cut that means anything.
-- Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Not stoic nor heroic, but both. He Persists. I admire his rejection of hunger, his hermitage in old age and sea.
Finished, and about making my way out of the caf� I was stopped by Old Woman and her Tea, who saw my helmet and commended me for riding in such weather. Said she cycles a lot herself, but not in this.
We chatted about our machines and where we ride them. I gestured a few blocks away to my judy, straplocked to a post. Complained of the constipated traffic and consternated population drivers potholes chuckholes phone poles car horns road block.
A sandwich was toasted and delivered to her, standing, and she invited I join. We found her table, sat across it and talked over her Tea.
Introductions. Her name sounds just like verily and I loved with how much sweet sincerity she spilled "I say unto thee" for what must've been the thousandth time in her (I'd guess) seventy years.
Her mouth pedaled and she spoke me on a wonderful bike ride -- I took notes on the route and can't wait until spring for the ravines, waterfalls, wells, the perfect picnic and place for postcards. Twenty-five miles through my Cleveland eastside backyard. She painted words around everything I'll see: a bridge with flowerboxes, a Mediterranean house and its owner, the rolling hills and history of the picnic-place land.
She's a Carmelite nun in a monastery just down the road, and how lucky, I, to share near an hour of her day off.
She told me she praises while she rides. She drips love and language, making tough finding herself time between paragraphs to nibble at her portabella and turkey toasted.
Conversation wandered to her life as nun, inspired by St. Therese of Lisieux, her peers and idols, theology and Catholicism, and God as personality, personal God. Her additions to my read list: works by St. John of the Cross and Thomas Merton.
I promised I'd come soon to Sunday Mass at the monastery and visit.
Verily, I look forward!