She chuckled and smiled as she spoke confidently about being legally blind.
"I can't read print or see faces on television but that's okay"
She started working in 1952 at a long-gone Buick dealership in Sewickley as the office manager -- four years before I was born. We talked for some time and both agreed that happiness is nearly always a choice rather than being so much a product of circumstance. Eleanor lives at home, cooks, cleans and does her own laundry. Someone in her building brings her groceries.
I asked her how she has remained healthy and happy
"I've always walked and I love people"
So what makes beautiful? It isn't the city where you live, the words you know and surely it isn't in the shape or form of your body.
* * *
Assault
I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.
I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
