Mrs. Bright I'm still here.

You should have seen what I saw this morning, Mrs. Bright. It was an old woman - well, not old old - but her face was long and folded into onionskin wrinkles, layers of years - and she had long, frosted hair feathered back from her face, and large sunglasses. But what really caught my eye was her skirt! It was short and it billowed out just so, and it was white and it sparkled like someone's best dream in the fall morning. She had on white tights and white shoes and a white blazer, and she looked like a picture from a magazine. Just like a picture from a magazine. And her face was so out of place in all that white and billow and sparkle, and -

- I forgot to mention she was on a bike, Mrs. Bright! It was a white bike, I don't know the kind, but she wasn't riding it. She was balancing on it, trying to ride it, I think. I only got a glimpse of her because I was driving by her on my way to work, but what I saw was a frown of concentration, and her papery face, and I had that moment you get where your mind tries to add up something that doesn't quite make sense in the first place. I mean, she couldn't ride that bike! It was like she was learning to ride it for the first time this Thursday morning in her fancy outfit, face all serious and studied. You would have loved to see it, Mrs. Bright. It was really something.

I drove on to work with this woman in my mind, and I thought of you. I thought you might have told me: You should have stopped! You should have gotten that story. You should have at least watched her for a moment. I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't occur to me. Of course it did, but it was 7:58 and it takes me five minutes to get to work from where I saw her, so you can see why I didn't stop. Right? I mean, I couldn't have stopped anyway on that cramped street. And there was nowhere for me to turn.

I'm glad I didn't see that in a magazine. I'm glad I got the opportunity to see it in real life, a moment tearing itself out of time for just a moment, something for me to save forever. I hope I remember this forever, Mrs. Bright.

Okay. It's not just the woman on the bicycle. I have a stack of these moments! Yesterday at the craft store I heard a plump black woman tell another plump black woman that she can quilt. And sew, and cross-stitch. "I can do all that stuff," she said, and I sneaked a peek over at her, but not too long, and saw she had these lovely, elegant fingers. She was buying buttons. "Does your mom know?" asked the other woman, and the crafty one said in all seriousness, "No, and you can't tell her. You can't tell anyone I can do that stuff. Nobody knows but you."

That's strange, isn't it? I wanted to know the story. I wanted to follow them around and pluck their words and shove them into my pockets, but I was on my lunch break and I needed to get back to work. So I took just those words, and the image of her hands, hands so obviously built for sewing and crafting, and I put those in my pockets. And it's enough, I guess. Is it, Mrs. Bright?

There's another thing. I was getting my hair cut at the salon and a woman came in who was obviously friends with my hair guy, and she had this enormous tattoo of an owl stretched across her back, two giant eyes peering at me from between the straps of her brown tank top. She seemed a little bedraggled as she came in, plopping tiredly down on the couch to wait her turn for a hair cut. "Hey, Mello," he said to her, and she said, "Hey, B," and he asked how her new baby was doing. And the Asian woman doing the genteel Texas woman's nails in the corner watched in interest. And I think the genteel Texas woman in the white button up shirt and carefully coiffed black hair knew this Mello person. Everyone knew everyone, I think, except me, so I peered down at my magazine and stole glances at everyone as they talked.

Mello went on and on about her home birth and how wonderfully organic it all was, and beautiful, and how it was when her baby boy slipped out between her legs and into the pool of water. She explained to the genteel Texan about doulas and midwives and the evils of hospital births. I had two hospital births, Mrs. Bright -- did I ever tell you that? -- but what Mello was saying didn't bother me at all. I want to believe in the beauty of a woman who finds a center from which to bring her child into the world, completely in the moment and in the comfort of her own home. I imagine she squeezed her eyes shut and tamped the pain down into a small, manageable nugget, and pressed and pressed until that pain was a glittering diamond, and pressed it some more until it was dust, and pressed more until it was nothing but cells and atoms and nuclei floating in the water around her with blood and placenta and her new baby boy. I can believe in that. In diamonds of pain, and the screaming mess of new life in the world.

This woman, this Mello with the large owl tattoo, exuded a persona. Like someone with a finger plugged into some outlet of nature, and she was electrified with it. She spoke of her boyfriend who was so wonderful and so present at the birth and such a dedicated father already, but later she sighed heavily and said that he was carrying around the darkest energy since he became a father. A blackness. They were going to have to give him some kind of cleansing. He needed time away. "Take all the time you need," she told him. And to B and the genteel Texan and the Asian manicurist she said, "This is what we have to do. It's not good for the baby to be around that darkness."

I don't know, Mrs. Bright. Is there such thing as someone who carries dark energy, and who can be a dedicated father but also need to be away from the baby to clear that dark energy? Who am I to judge that, anyway? Who am I to judge someone who knows firsthand that pain can be tamped into diamonds? Someone who has held that diamond in her fists.

The world is so weird sometimes. I saw Mello at the grocery store with that new baby a few weeks later. She was buying landfill-friendly disposable diapers and a pound of organic bacon. I was buying lavender bubble bath and pecan smoked sausage. This is significant, I thought as I stared down at the items in my basket. Somehow, it is.

It is, isn't it? It has to be. Old women in white sparkly skirts on bikes and secret crafting and diamond pain and dark energy and pecan smoked sausage. I don't know. I guess all I mean to say, Mrs. Bright, is that I'm still here. I'd write that I miss you but you've already figured that out.