Dear Judy: I’m an “Old Timer” Now, Too

Thanks in no small part to you, but I’m still not sure how it happened or what it means.

I walk out of the parish hall into the ice-cold night, down the steps past the smokers (have a good night, yeah you too, good night), and along the dark sidewalk to my decrepit Ford station wagon parked along the picket fence in front of the churchyard. There are no lights on at the general store or the library, not a single car coming up the road from the mill pond. It’s as dark and desolate as a January night on an island off the coast of New England can be.

But I am warm in my geeky double layers of down (coat and vest), my stained Uggs, and my new Nepalese embroidered wool hat I bought at The Beach House before Christmas. I love this hat so much – it fits my big head and takes care of a very unruly mop of half-curly hair that has grown to an excessive length and rarely gets straightened.

I still hear my mother’s voice saying, “Are you going to wear THAT?” when I slide into my hole-y jeans and put the same comfortable pilled wool sweater on every day. Or another of her favorites: “When are you going to cut your hair?” And on the very darkest nights, I hear her battering me with this one again and again, “When are you going to have a baby?” Though actually she phrased that more like, “You are going to have a baby soon, aren’t you?”

But tonight as I wipe the frost off the inside of the Ford windows (what’s up with that?), I’m not thinking about this other person my mother wanted me to be.