Signals

It was just about sundown and i sat in my comfortable chair to drink my warm coffee and enjoy one of the last summer evenings of the year. The children were playing loudly in the street and a couple of old women at the house accross the street were sitting by the window watching them. They were obviously annoyed, talking about how the new generation does not respect anything, and then moved on thinking of their times, their old neighbourhood, the rules they obeyed "when we were their age".
Old women, young ladies of a past era. They now lightly carry arround their years in slow, heavy movements from the house to the grossery store, to the chemist two roads above, to the food market near the square once a week. Their bodies a little bent from the weight of carrying arround weddings, births and celebrations. Years of hard work, wars and deaths of loved ones.
You can see the map of their lives on their faces, their loud laughs, their worries, the tears, the secret smiles.

They'll invite you in the house, offer you homemade sweets, make you coffee and bring you cold water. They'll use the old china, the crystals once saved for good occasions and if you protest they'll tell you that they've learned that this is a good occasion as well. They've learned that there is no use saving the nicest things for only twice a year. They'll sit you down at the small table by the window, the one with the white linen tablecloth they themselves made "when I was your age". And the smell of roses from their garden will mix with the sugary scent of their sweets.
Ask them and you'll hear your country's history. Their eyes lit up in memory of their first house, their first love, the first, the innocent years. You'll not speak, just listen to their lives unravelling, the memories, full years. Women lucky enough to have lived through all the roles they've ever thought of, someones children, lovers, wives, mothers, grandmothers. Passing through seasons like the earth, women worked by the years, like the fields.
You'll leave their house late, way after sundown, wondering whether you'll be like that, whether you will have memories of a full life "when I'll be their age".