Her voice was feathery-light, echoing her physical appearance.  Despite her wispy exterior it was clear enough from listening to her breathless, non-stop narration of her life story that she was made of stern stuff to have endured all the set-backs that had beset her journey.

There was nothing morose about her, she simply sparkled with the joy of life.  And she recounted all the good things that had happened as she journeyed through life, along with the bad.

She was old but certainly not elderly.  Her exquisite face with its perfectly aligned features that of a pert, lovely young woman with preternaturally deep lines running through those curves of forehead, cheeks, chin.  She fairly bubbled with enthusiasm for her topic of discussion: life as she knew it.  Her hair curled in silver-grey ringlets around her small heart-shaped face.  She was, in fact, beautiful and this I told her.  She dimpled happily.

We stood there, listening as she explained her childhood hospitalized with one leg a mere stick of an appendage.  It was her brother, her older brother, who undertook to teach her how to walk again.  Explaining the presence of her physical tilt, her fractured gait. Her brother, who died at age 48 of a sudden-onset heart attack. 

Her brother who was so beloved as a city councillor, among other public activities, that the very community centre where I had years ago taken our grandchild for swimming lessons with its large, celebrated wave pool, had been named after him.

Her family name, in fact, was echoed in other places around the city; street names, other building names as well.  She was part of the historical aristocracy of our city.

She spoke briefly of having been married, once.  Of having worked for many municipal and federal government departments at elite levels.  She spoke also of her experience with private industry.  Which took her to other international locales, where she lived until moving on elsewhere.  But always returning to this city which was her home, where she was raised and where her memories were so plangently present.

Why she now lived alone, with a small cat for company, in a third-floor garret over a storefront, was puzzling.  For she spoke also of a sister, other family members, even a daughter of her own.  But briefly, not lingering excessively on her relations with them. 

It was cool and windy, standing there, outside the antique mall located on Bank Street, where she had a stall of her own.  She sold old lace and embroideries, she told us.  To the discerning.  But this city had a deserved reputation for failing to appreciate treasures of the past.

It had been years since we had gone through the place.  But we had been curious about how it might have changed, if any of the dealers there might have some intriguing 19th Century paintings we might be interested in.  As it happened, when we walked into the front entrance we were met by an apologetic woman who informed us we couldn't enter with a dog.

Evidently new restrictions applied; she explained that it was a new policy.  So I stood outside, carrying little Riley in his over-the-shoulder bag while my husband quickly perused the interior.  When he emerged he insisted that I too have a look; particularly at a few paintings he described.

He took Riley and I went inside and viewed the paintings but nothing inspired me to admiration.  As I exited I noticed my husband in conversation with a woman.

She had noticed him standing there, holding a small dog and had left her booth to engage him in conversation, initially revolving around her love for animals and her pique at the new policy which, she said seemed very unfair to her.  As she saw my husband's attention swerve to me, she too pivoted her attention, viewing my approach.  Her first words as I approached were complimentary to my outfit.

After which a three-way conversation ensued.  Two people mesmerized by the recounting of a life, feeling constrained to remain there in sympathy with someone who felt inclined to speak with passion and fondness of her memories and experiences to complete strangers.  And so we remained, a captured audience, occasionally sprinkling her monologue with an observation of our own. 

We were adequately dressed for the weather, she was not, but she kept to her mission to unburden herself of memories.

Veering off from one sentence and one experience to a tangential other, spinning her tales, laughing and regaling us with stories of her connection to people of note, famous authors, artists of other stripes, diplomats, and her position from one year to the next of her life. 

With each tentative move on our part to carefully bid adieu, she murmured that she simply had to go, but then began another thread and so we remained, listening.

Until we no longer could, for my husband's enlarged prostate dictated otherwise, and we finally made good our delayed leaving, expressing our deep appreciation at having made her acquaintance and the pleasure we had taken in our conversation with her.

As we drove away, we felt sadness for this sprite of a woman living her memories in a strange isolation of space and time.