My eyes felt drawn to her. It was her 1920’s style hat that first caught my attention. So elegant in a sea of people throwing scarves and newspapers over their heads in an attempt to block the sun. Someone had brought her a chair to sit on. While the rest of us sat on the ground, leaning in towards anything that would give us some reprieve from the kind of tired feeling that comes with just, waiting.
With long side ways glances I slowly took her in. Her velvet embroidered winter jacket, long skirt and slipper style shoes seemed to contrast terribly. The elegance and care given up top, and been forsaken for comfort on her feet. Soft shoe fittings slipped on to tired worn feet that might have been jammed into unyielding heeled shoes for far too many years. Who was I too judge? Maybe, if I was lucky enough to reach my moonshine years, I too would feel like wearing slipper style shoes one day with an elegant embroidered velvet jacket.
And a hat.
I thought about her later when I got back home. Wondered about her decades lived before me and all the things that she might have done. I wondered about the stories she might be able to share and the different periods that she had lived through. I hadn’t asked though, I hadn’t even said one word to her. Just wondered.
I was reminded of a picture I had, gently sitting between the pages of a thick heavy book here at home. A picture from long ago that my mum had given me. Not a picture from a family member or a picture with a story. Just a picture that had been in a box, auctioned by a stranger and come bundled up together along side a few other treasures. I had often thought about this lady as well. The stories she would have told, the curiosity and intrigue that I’m sure she would have created in her own era and then again by me so many years later.
Both of these women were completely different, yet similar in that they created an air of mystic. A pause, a wonder. A long held thought on everything they were now or that they had been before. The places they had gone, the people they had spent time with. Their favourite way to drink tea. How that elegantly embroidered velvet jacket or those sequins had been decided on.
Things I’ll never know, but instead I’m given a moment or two to think about each woman in her own way. Their life, their intrigue…their stories.
cityhippyfarmgirl 
what a lovely and evocative post brydie..one of the reasons i love pre loved things is for their stories..x
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teawithhazel’s comment is spot on. Nothing further to add other than nothing wrong with slipper style shoes!
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I think I’ve said this to you once before Brydie, this post is literature.
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Thanks Rose, that’s really kind. xx
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Gorgeous post! I could simply picture every word you spoke 🙂
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Magic!
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Love following your posts. There is something about times passed that give us purpose in life. Well done.
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Thanks Marilyn…and hello 🙂
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What a beautiful post Brydie. Love it!
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beauitful post. I sometimes see older people and I wonder about their stories and how they might have looked when they were younger
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Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a story written behind each picture!
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I love old photos; you can stare at them for ages just piecing together their stories, particularly as you realise these images were such a rare event in their lives. Someone from that era was probably only photographed less than a dozen times in their entire lifetime. So we need the photos to say so much xx
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It would have been such a rare event in that time, and she is so dressed up…so many possibilities. I’m really lucky to have it.
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Beautiful and heart felt post!
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Lovely post Brydie. Many years ago I worked in aged care with psycho-geriatrics. I loved them to bits, especially the really dippy ones – they were great (mostly). Unfortunately, this is an area that was then, and continues to be now, dreadfully underfunded so there were a lot of very young untrained staff working with these treasures. I had to constantly remind the younger staff that the people they were caring for were just like them once, had once had similar hopes and dreams and had lived lives full of stories – just like your lady.
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Amanda the whole medical area is terribly underfunded. I’ve worked in a few different areas (nursing) and it’s just so frustrating what things people have to put up with… So I know exactly what you mean. xx
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I love this post and I also love this comment.My grandmother is in an aged care facility and still bright as a button. But I often sit on her bed as she chats to me in her lounge chair and glance at her to this old photo on the wall of her as a young woman, unmarried, olive skin and a glint of mischief in her eyes. As I hold her creased , soft hand of this amazing old woman, this photo calls me to look to who she was ….this brave young thing about to embark on her life.
As always Brydie, you see more in one moment or picture than most people would see in a lifetime. Thank you for writing about it.
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Touching!
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