The Cab Stand

 Tippi Hedren

     Helen was a beauty, in her late 60s or maybe even early 70s,    5′5″ or so, 105 or 110 lbs. I would guess…   and I’d have to guess, because Helen was an old school belle, the sort of woman you wouldn’t dare ask about years and pounds and such.   She was slim-hipped with a tiny waist, and had a perfectly rounded, perfectly proportioned derriere.   Oxford shirts with the top two buttons undone and beige-toned slacks were her normal attire, sensible shoes and a simple purse were her accessories.   She could’ve easily passed as Tippi Hedren’s plainer-dressing sister.

     I drove Helen to her hairdresser each week, her hair color specialist once each month ( she adored her hairdresser but didn’t trust her with color ), and to a wide variety of doctors on what was, unfortunately, a schedule with intervals that were increasingly brief.

     We met because she rode cabs to and from her job at the Baby Gap, and there was a certain comfortable electricity between us from the beginning, no matter that I was fifteen or more years her junior.   Helen jabbered, and while that would normally drive me to distraction, her jabbering was fun somehow…   almost a taxicab pillow talk if you can imagine such a thing.   The topics of her almost-monologues ranged from crises in her work-a-day world to wistful memories of vacations in Italy… in her last months, after she had retired and gone to live with her daughter’s family, and after her health began to fail, I was her private sounding board.   My cab became her confessional, and I her confessor.   I suspect that as a practical matter, she had no other sanctuary that she considered absolute.  

     And had she not taken ill, I also suspect that the confessional would have eventually extended to my bed.

     A curious thing, that…   I have had, in my life, only two lovers older than me, one by a month, the other by only a bit more than a year…   two out of…  well, many.   I did have a prolific youth.   But that’s off on a tangent to the point of this exercise.   Which is…  

     That I find it especially curious, this emotional/physical/sensual attraction to Helen, because it seems to have marked a turning point in me…   once upon a time, the very idea of boinking a 70ish grandmother was repulsive, outlandish, and absurd.   In the abstract, such thoughts are still beyond my mind’s pale.   But, through the process of coming to know Helen and the glimmers of desire that this process produced, I now find myself able to see ( at least some ) senior women as women…   complete and viable creatures and not shadows of lives already acted and awaiting only the stagehands’ removal of the sets.   Revelations realized from behind a steering wheel…

     I miss Helen.   I think I miss what might have been.   I think it would have been fun, and tender, and sweet…   and somehow, I think it might have been a surprise adventure for us both.   I know a part of her was lonely and in need when she died…   the sort of loneliness and need that even the best of families ( and she did love hers ) cannot fill.   Helen was a mother and grandmother, a career woman and a widow when death came for her.   She should have also been someone’s lover, and someone’s love.

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