jumpingfish

She carefully stepped out of her flip-flops and stepped into the water. She walked with a bit of a stoop. Her hair was grey and short with curls. Scars on her knees suggested past surgeries. She held on to the railing as she walked down the steps.

I was sitting in the corner with hot, bubbling water swirling around me. I watched her as she got in. Our eyes met.

“Feels good,” I said.

She didn’t hear me and walked closer. “What… did you say?”

“It feels really good, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. And she sat in the water a few feet away from me. I introduced myself.

“I… I… am… I am 63,” she said.

“Well, happy birthday,” I said. “When is your birthday?”

“In… in… November.”

“Happy Birthday!”

She smiled and turned towards me and began to tell me the story of her life, but speaking didn’t come easy. She struggled with her words, searching for them and clearly finding many just out of reach. But she was quite creative with her hands, acting out the words that she could not find when she could produce no substitutes.

“I… have… aphasia,” she apologized.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Keep going. I’m following you fine.” She had been talking about girls at UT playing volleyball, I think, and how tall they were.

She told me how she came from Michigan. She held up her right hand palm towards us to show where she grew up. She pointed to Jackson when I said that my grandparents had lived there.

She tried to tell me about growing up. It sounded like they were very poor. She showed me a ring on her hand with a gold moon and a diamond Venus — did her father give it to her?

She went to school in Michigan and ended up in Austin at the university. Maybe she was a physical education professor. Or maybe a coach. She had that look about her. Lean. Muscular. She reminded me of Dr. Wynn at the lab school when we were growing up long ago (who come to think of it was probably about 63 way back then).

“How old…?” she asked, pointing at me.

“Fifty-four,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “You don’t… you… don’t…” She pointed to my hair, and I laughed.

“Oh, the grey hair’s coming,” I said. “You should see me when I don’t shave.”

Later, in the parking lot where I was waiting for the fair and industrious Trudy to pick me up, the woman came out with her duffle bag over her shoulder and her car keys in her hand. We talked until Trudy showed up.

The woman pointed at me and looked at Trudy. “He’s… he’s… a good… one.” She said. The unlocked the door of her creme-colored Mercedes sedan and drove off.

She never did tell me her name.

The air was brisk, the sky a cloudy gray. Yesterday’s blue and sun were gone.

Brown leaves lay on the ground. Green cactus and viney things stood to the left and right of the path.

The dogs were happy to be out, pulling on their leashes, sniffing at the ground, dreaming of dashing off into the underbrush. The muddy ground was soft underfoot. Cardinals chipped in the thicket.

We ate our Christmas lunch, ham sandwiches and plantain chips from a lookout on the top of a hill with the city in the distance and the hills of the Hill Country rising up behind in the west.

Merry Christmas everyone.

I rounded the far turn thinking how good it felt to be running slowly. There was no sign of the deer now. They must have moved off into the woods. Or greener grass somewhere else.

Just a couple laps left.

Someone was kneeling in the shadows in the second lane at the end of the far straightaway. Maybe the guy who lapped me. Maybe that person who was setting up hurdles in the dark. No. It was a woman who looked to be in her late sixties. She was bent over a measuring tape. She looked up as I jogged by in lane five.

“Do you want a light? I have one I’m not using.” I said.

She stood up. I could barely make out a smile on her face.

“No thanks. I just have to measure this and one more.” She pointed to the far turn.

I stopped and walked back.

“Are you sure? It’s pretty dark out here, and I have this light.”

I pulled the clip-on LED light off my hat and turned it on. I could see that she was working with a yellow tape measure that was stretched out on the ground. 

“I have a few laps left. You can use it until I finish.”

She chuckled and took me up on my offer.

She later explained that she was preparing for her morning workout tomorrow. Back from some international track meet in Brazil, she is training with a coach who has her running constant time laps starting in the inside lane and working out to lane six. She was evidently curious how much longer she had to run in each lane, wondering I guess how much faster she would have to run each lap in order to keep her time constant.

Odd time of day to be making those measurements. And how on earth was she expecting to see the numbers on her tape? And anyway, this is the kind of question that Google is good at answering.

Whatever. Who am I to say? After all, she just got back from some international track meet in Brazil, and late sixties or not, she looked mighty speedy.

Most of the US team was dialed in from conference rooms on the second floor. A few of us and most of the India team were dialed in remotely.

The meeting video showed me sitting in my blue shirt at my desk. Behind me was the wall of books that lines our study.

“Wow,” said K. Although it was morning here, it was late at night there. Those guys always stay up late for our morning meetings. “You really study a lot,” K said

“Ah yes, in the days of my youth,” I replied.

“Oh, you are still young!” he said, adding a smiley face. “So many books in your behind.”

Um, thanks… I think.

“Cancel it,” he said.

I didn’t understand what he meant.

“Cancel it. Right there.” He pointed to the screen. “Click the X.”

So I clicked the button with the red X on it, the button that said Cancel underneath.

“No!” he said, but it was too late. I had cancelled it. I had click the X. But I had done the wrong thing.

You see when he said “cancel,” he didn’t really mean click on the cancel button, rather he meant close the window.

And when he said “click the X” and pointed to a button with a big red X on it, he didn’t intend for me to click the button, rather he meant for me to close the window.

I guess I just take things too literally.