pearls

“People look at you like you’re done,” she said, “and you’re not done.” Spoken by a woman my age, coming out of ballet class with my daughter. Here on the outside of the social boundary, I am thinking about the things I really am done with, and also the things I am just beginning, now that I am done with the other things. This morning, a short film about a woman in the Hebrides who lives alone and refers to herself as a “cailleach,” which she translates as “old woman.” I aspire to her level of serenity, tell myself that in another life I could be her, feeding the sheep, knitting socks, looking out at the water from her front window. My clothes even look a little bit like hers. But in fact it’s the restlessness that hasn’t left me. Am I making a mistake, keeping on with tending the old wounds? I ask the cards. And pull the Queen of Cups, drawn as a selkie wearing a beautiful baroque pearl on her forehead. Constant irritation can produce something lovely, she says.