Snapshot 1: Mrs. Bartholomew

As evidenced by most of my posts, I'm striving to live in the moment, to not delay enjoying life until some cloudy future;  I am instead determined to make time for family, friends, music, art, sightseeing, yes, the obvious things, but also those details, perhaps surprises, of life that previously I might otherwise have overlooked.

This past Monday, my bud, Cindy, and I carried a blond round table with bamboo legs from Cindy's sister's shop into the home of Mrs. Bartholomew.  A petite widow --her head haloed in pink plastic haircurlers-- she gently moved about her small second-floor flat which was bulging with knicknacks and the clutter of life:  lotion bottles, stacks of mail, odds and ends spilling across the kitchen counter that separated the tiny kitchen from the dining area.  Her lit Christmas tree was standing at the living room window, and strings of lights, tacked two feet from the ceiling, circled the whole room of flower-wallpapered walls.  Cotton "snow" adorned sideboards with angels and a manger.  As she watched us scan the space, she smiled and admitted, "I've been decorating."

The table we delivered was to replace her mahogany stained rectangular dining table that was a bit large and overpowering for her small living/dining room.  Once we carried our table through the front door, past the kitchen and sat it in its place, she softly entoned, "Oh dear, it is quite low, isn't it?"  Cindy offered that it would be no problem to cancel the sale.  But, pulling up a dining chair, Mrs. Bartholomew sat down, laid her hands on the table top, thought a moment, and then suggested, somewhat tentatively, that, despite being lower than a traditional dining table, it might indeed work.  I could see uncertainty behind her eyes, and so I offered that it looked sweet in her space, perhaps suggesting a proper height for teatime or coffee.  She responded, barely above a British whisper, "I do like my tea."

It was as we said goodbye, and were headed back down the hallway to the elevator, I looked back, smiled and waved to her as she stood at her open door, that I noticed her bright pink polished toenails peaking out from her slippers.