I'm sitting at the local gourmet pizza place waiting for my
salad, hoping for a quiet lunch so I can work on my novel. Too bad.
One after another, a dozen elderly women toddle into the tiny room
where I sit, and I am soon to realize it is the weekly Tuesday meeting of the
Hysterical Ladies Society.
Seven are wearing red hats, three have canes, all are
smiling and laughing. All are glowing
with an inner beauty so that I can hardly stop looking at them. Their eyes are bright and alert, and they
have clearly dressed up for one another on this special day. They don’t let their red hats dictate the
color of their outfits. Their colors are
as vast and varied as a box of crayons.
One wears a lavender suit with a heavy jacket and complains
of being cold. I sit by the window
wearing a paper thin peasant blouse and shorts, and am sweating like a whore in
church on this July day.
The lavender lady is reluctant to hand over her empty Target
bag to the lady beside her, worried she’ll need it to take food home to her
dog. In my pantry at home are at least a
hundred plastic Target bags, and I wish I could hand them over to this funny
lady who takes leftover pizza to her dog.
I imagine a white fluff ball of a mutt waiting at home for her, probably
on a pillow. He’s about to get pizza.
The youngest of the women – eighty-five if she’s a day – orders a
glass of wine and three others immediately follow. One says, “You’ve been driving?” She is
incredulous, her eyes big behind her glasses, her lipsticked mouth turned down
in disapproval. This scares me. I want to know what the
chastised one drives and where she lives so I can avoid her.
One struggles to put on a sweater and says, “By the time I
get dressed I feel like I’ve done a day’s work.” They laugh and the one helping her into her
sweater says, “We should go to Mexico!” I picture her chasing young men in banana
hammocks while trying to balance a Mai Tai in one hand and her cane in the
other. “I’m serious as a heart attack,”
she says. She is on oxygen, but she is clearly
an instigator.
When did we begin to discount the elderly? Why do we think they have nothing to
offer? I am dying to sit at their table
with them. I want to hear every one of
their stories, learn their names, ask them where I can get a red hat. I am fifty-seven and suddenly excited about
being eighty. Or ninety. Or more.
I’m guessing that many – maybe all – have lost
husbands. Maybe some have even lost
children. But they are here, and they
are dressed, and they are laughing. They
meet once a week to celebrate being alive, inspired, alert, and creative. They are hysterical, but in the best sense of
the word.
As they were all arriving at the restaurant, two of them
waved and called out to two others through the window. Then turned, put their gray heads together,
and said something nasty about one of the other women. Something about whiskers. Then they laughed and I thought of junior
high girls. Some things about us
change. Some things, not so much.
They are sassy, and feisty, and fabulous. As the Zen saying goes, “The butterfly has
not days but moments, and somehow it is enough.” We must remind ourselves to make this moment
count. This fabulous, red-hatted,
overly-lipsticked moment.
So save your Target bags, grab your red hat, and meet me at
the pizza joint in thirty years. I only
hope I am half as cool as they are by then.
Seriously, where can I get a red hat?
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