she has been smoking all her life and just turned 81.

writing in the morning will prove to be a mistake. it is not my brightest time of day.



today i visit my old lady. i really dont know why i call her that. i could call her mrs. gemert (with that gutteral g). or tante sis, which is what every one else calls her. but somehow i like my old lady better. mrs. gemert is too formal; tante sis too informal (though she did say i could call her that). hmm...my old lady....its personalized by using my, but the old lady part...maybe thats too impersonal...

whatever. i like it. i am sticking with it. till i am comfortable enough to say tante sis.



she is sweet, my old lady is. sweet and very direct, which is an interesting combination. and she likes to tease, though i dont always catch it right away so her jokes are sometimes followed by a look of slight disappointment. usually though, they are followed by a good laugh, even bigger when i look at her with a dumb confused look on my face. jokes in another language are just so much harder to catch...

yesterday she called me to make sure i was still coming today. i told her i was still planning on it. and she said that was good, cause she really enjoyed our visits and didnt want to miss it. i almost cried.

the book i am writing for her is going to be very short. maybe i should look at it as a long essay. or a short story. so far, 16 pages. but its the content i am worried about. i am writing in dutch. and my literary dutch is at a very childish level yet. so the book sounds like it was written by a ten year old. at least it will be easy to understand, if they can get past my various grammatical and structural errors. in each sentence. yeah, i am gonna need luuk to edit for me.

i hope i live a long and happy life such as hers. it wasnt without heartache. but it was happy. i just dont like the idea of living longer than all my friends and loved ones. that seems depressing. luuk and i are going to travel alot when we are older, so the likelihood of us dying together in a plane crash is higher. thatd be a way to go. i dunno what would be better. to die in your sleep, unaware that you are going. or to die watching the earth rush up to you, knowing these are your last seconds. hmm.

thats too morbid for a morning.

anyway. so my old lady. she is a happy person. but i think she is lonely. i wish i could do more.

i think i will bring a pastry for the coffee today. it was her birthday last week. she might like that. i would get her flowers, but the guy who walks her dog gives her flowers every day and she sometimes gives them to me when she doesnt know what to do with them all. i think he is secretly in love with her. but she thinks she is too old for love.