Something to look forward to

Yes. I'm pretty sure its going to happen. I'm positive actually.
I am going to be a batty old person. Maybe even a batty middle aged person.

I'll wear long patchwork skirts and rubber galoshes and bangles from India and leather bracelets from islands where Brahmin cows roam freely through streets with cracked pavement and fruit rotting in the gutters. I may even re-pierce my nose and instead of my old hoop I'll adorn it with a red ceramic rose. My skin will be dark with blended freckles and mapped with a globe's worth of laugh lines. I'll live in a house with people of all ages to whom I am a mother, a lover, a companion, a confidant, a friend, a colorful old character.

And I'll be talking to myself more than I do now. Biking through Belgian fields, stumbling over cobblestoned town centers, riding to my next cup of coffee or goblet of pungent beer, I talked to myself. When I wasn't talking, often in a French accent (my actual French is horrible but my accent is pretty awesome if I do say so myself), I was singing or laughing or listening to the deeper voice inside, the one that was me but not quite me. Not in a schizophrenic way, just in a way that happens after days or weeks or months of being mostly alone. When the only people you talk to hand you things like food or drinks or little statues of pissing boys (I didn't buy one). But what is more fun than flying through a flower filled pasture, past actual windmills spinning underneath modern wind generators, beside canals singing at the top of your lungs to the goats and cows and ducks?

I continue to hum and talk and laugh and sing as I walk through Brooklyn or across my old campus near Washington Square Park. It is New York and talking, singing, yelling to oneself (or strangers) on the street is pretty normal.

The captain that I worked with in the Caribbean commented over dinner one night that I am always making sounds. He said he found it charming, my steady stream of grunts at thoughts or humming of songs or sighing or clicking my tongue at spatulas and bowls in the galley. I wasn't aware of it but I kind of like that I can't seem to contain the sounds I am thinking and feeling.
They bubble up or shoot forth without my consent.
They burst or are whispered into the world and color other peoples afternoons.

So I figure I'm well on my way to being that eternally mumbling eccentric old woman. I will start (OK, continue) stockpiling fuzzy sweaters and leather boots with mismatching laces, tiny barrettes, scarves of all sizes and colors, flowy tops with embroidered flowers. I will wait to buy the blue eyeshadow but I may as well start a tchotchke collection now. Maybe I will go in the salt and pepper cellars direction. I might as well collect ugly ceramic cherubs that serve a purpose.

But hey, as long as my little voices, my sounds, my songs keep me entertained, keep me laughing, keep my eyes open to the world like a curious child, all is well.

Misbuttoned sweaters, dirty galoshes, and all.