“He knew he was lucky to land this interview. She was a legend, after all. She’d been making people laugh and cry, dance and sing, for more than seventy years.
Still, she was a shock, this tiny, frail woman with clawlike hands that embraced his briefly then let go. He tried not to search her face for evidence of that fresh-faced ingénue, or the celebrated Oscar winner, or even the feisty old lady with the fat laugh from twenty years before.
She sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, ‘My dear, we can’t start this way. I have no illusions about what time has done to me. Inside, I’m still her. Still here. Getting old is hell on the body, but that isn’t what does us in. It’s the Before and Afters.’
He waited. She waited longer.
‘The before and–’
‘Afters, yes. Those moments that are so intense that we know even as they happen, I will never be happy this way again. Or perhaps, We will never be happy in quite the same way as we were before this.’”
From Hester’s novel The Before and Afters, about an unlikely friendship.
I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.