First, I used hear her boots cracking across the cement of my backyard street. Her steps were gentle, meaningful, like savoring the rhyme. Not the rapid steps of an eager runner or the rushed prescribed walk of a soccer mom. No, her steps were meaningful, musical, magnetic...

From my raised backyard view, first thing I would see was the top of her hat. Sturdy, thick, ripe-earth felt, then ... my ahh of delight at the sight of her the full and spacious chocolate brown hat! Rich, heavy, mystical. I had a sense of the same wonder I felt when as a child, I saw a pair of birds escaping from a magician's hat!

The brim was wide, commanding. It turned up in front in a furtive flair; underneath I could uncover the hint of a slight smile. A tall middle-aged woman with a young girl's sprint.


She was all there... erect, distinguished and elegant. Alone. Always alone. Her eyes looked ahead, at everything or nothing, as if she was seeing much more that everyone else could ever see , or comprehend.
Her gloved hands, in motion with her stride.
It seemed to me she was experiencing a hint of the sacred ...
I wanted that, I must confess. I shivered slightly enveloped by her haunting presence.

That was the time I saw her face for the first time. In the rapture of that sunlit day I encountered an enigma--a story--the intersection of mystery. I started revering the image of a person I would never know.

I named her the Greta Garbo lady.

It was through the low juniper bushes I'd planted around my yard that I saw her for the first time at 8:15 on a placid spring morning. I heard steps approaching in a lovely tempo.
Intrigued, I stopped my work, knelt on the grass, and breathed slower, so not to disturb the rhythm. I breathed in her vision, her command, and her alluring mystery. Then, like a clock, she passed by each workday during the spring and summer of that year. It was the crest of my day.

Through the years, my junipers grew to two, then five luscious feet tall. I enjoyed my green and bushy nature-wall.

But I missed the Garbo lady. As soon as spring started to blossom, I'd rush to the backyard by 8:00 o'clock, my legs leaping, squirreling through the now-tall bushes, heart thumping, eyes hungry for her sight. But I didn't see her. I didn't see her again for some years. I'd wondered: did my prized tall and hefty green barrier shut her off?

Then, one day, years later, while outside in the shade of an afternoon sun, I saw her again; at an unusual time, with an unusual attire, within an unusual frame; my long-lost mystery lady--minus the hat.
I almost didn't recognize her. Her Garbo was gone. She looked vulnerable, lonely--naked without her hat. I wonder if one day the wind had swept her hat away, taking away with it her soul and inner being, erasing her, bit by bit, forever. I almost didn't recognize her, yet ingrained on her was still that trace of mystery, magnetism and alluring.

It was her all right, but just a shell of her old presence.

No stature. No joy. Her singsong walk was now a cold, robotic stride.



That's the time I saw her face for the first time as well. Her eyes had a vacant, distant stare. Her disheveled long gray hair was a tangled mess. Tension lined her brow, making her look hard, harsh. Her hand fidgeted through a seemingly empty pocket. Her gray, heavy winter jacket seemed to be enveloped in layers of smoky clouds --the faraway look of a tombstone.

I felt the ache of a stab.

That was the last time I saw her.

I didn't look for her again. I chose to honor her by remembering how she was before, in those spring and summer mornings when life was grand and I was raising my boundary.

My junipers bowed a little as well, as if to honor or her passing.

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