The Old Lady Who Paints Every Morning

There's an old woman in my neighborhood who sets up an easel on the corner of 9th and Holly every morning at seven and paints the same street scene. She's been doing it for years.

Every painting is different. The light changes. The seasons change. In spring there are cherry blossoms. In winter, snow on the roofs. Sometimes she adds people walking by, tiny figures with umbrellas or dogs.

I stopped to talk to her one morning. Her name is Florence. She's eighty-four. She took up painting at seventy-five, when she retired from being a court reporter. "I spent my whole life writing down what other people said," she told me. "Now I'm writing down what the light says."

She gave me one of her paintings, from a morning in October. I'm in it. I'm the tiny figure in a red scarf, walking a dog. It's hanging in my kitchen.