This granny I see every Friday evening sitting on the stairway of the subway station on my way home, she's probably around mid-80 year old living along if she has a home at all, living day by day from changes she gets on the street. She is the sweetest old lady I've ever encountered since my mother-side grandma. She seemed reckless when I first time saw her there, not even had an energy to lift up her face buried by a hat she forcefully pushed down. When striving to initiate a conversation, she hardly looked at me, although a sense of appreciation was there, I knew. So that was my first encounter with my favorite granny ever.
A couple of months have been passed now. She's still there every Friday, she said she usually spends whole day hoping to earn small amount of money for sustaining her checkered life. A good twenty dollars will do her for any whole week. Suddenly, I was curious, curious about who she was/is, what's in her mind when she's receiving coins carelessly dropped into the ripped red plastic basket she preciously holds in her bosoms, and how she would feel if someone strikes a conversation.
So I started to talk. And she listened. She hardly said anything in return on the first day. But now I know she doesn't happen to have any child, married once but became a widow soon after, worked as a housemaid for a now well-off man who she became embraced as almost a member of his family, etc. While narrating pieces of her life here and there, she maintained smile on her face. Was she because she remembered them fondly of, or she was simply happy that day? I wondered again.
It's Friday today, she'll be on the stairway by now.
