(You can listen to this piece on S2E28 of the podcast)
Jean settled into her richly detailed seafoam blue chaise lounge by the window. She crossed her legs over the scene of a mermaid trading shells with a sun goddess. The type of furniture you find in museums, except this piece was all hers. This chaise an oasis in the pop art bright home she’d curated in her quiet corner of the world.
Bill chirped in his cage beside her as if to say it’s not that quiet in this corner of the world. He was correct after all, and Jean reached her hand into his eggshell white cage and caressed his matcha green feathers. The fuchsia-painted enamel on her nails humored her. Bold choice for a 78-year-old.
Jean returned her gaze to the picture outside her window, taking note of the daffodils in the planter box of the neighbor across the street. On a block full of stormy day gray condos with black trim, the daffodils were a nice touch. Yellow trumpeters swaying not because of the wind in the air, but the artificial breeze of passerby. Passerby riding bikes or skateboarding or in-lining, or hover boarding down the sidewalk. None walking on two feet. More motorized scooters and wheelchairs than people getting around the old-fashioned way, Jean thought out loud. Bill chirped in agreement. Though, of course, she wasn’t so old-fashioned. Just fashionably old, she liked to say.
But the way the youngsters zoomed around like fast-forwarded black and white movie reels? Jean didn’t envy their world. Just the daffodils in her neighbor’s planter box across the street that waved in the windless afternoon announcing their loveliness. Their blooms symphonic representations, a herald or dutiful announcer of beauty and brightness to anyone paying attention, but of course their only audience was Jean and her faithful parakeet Bill and of course the homeowner. They were the only ones living in full color for miles. The rest of the world rushed by on wheels of two or four and perhaps less and more. No one walked by leisurely, satisfied in their Kansas world when they could live in Oz. Like Jean and Bill. Enjoy the yellow brick road or at least the yellow daffodil rows just as they did on this windless Sunday afternoon enjoying life the old-fashioned way like back in Jean’s day. Not that she was old-fashioned, mind you. Just fashionably old compared to her young and drab milieu.
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