On my mother’s weekly Sunday trips to the nursing home to visit my grandma, I would often go along for the ride. One trip in particular stands out in my mind because of… her. We had barely reached the front desk after our visit when I saw her.

Long, flowing locks of graying hair cascaded down from her dry, balding scalp in resplendent glory. A mask of sagging, leathery skin enveloped a pair of watery blue eyes, which stared back at me with increasing interest. A pale, yellow bird sat perched on the drooping, sallowed skin of her forearm, squawking out random cries.

At first glance of her radiant beauty I was taken aback, and only followed silently in step behind my mother to the front desk. But soon the stench of some perfume, probably concocted in the early 1920’s, enveloped me as she approached; it drew me around on my feet, as did the sound of her voice.

“Those look like heavy bags,” she said in a romantically foreign accent. “Where are you carrying them?” Her withered, cracking lips formed each word with delicate intricacy like a sculptor, gently chiseling out each ribbon until the final masterpiece is created.

I managed to mumble some incoherence about them being my grandmother’s bags, timidity tangling my words and shattering them on the floor before they had left my mouth. The dry, rasping flutter of the wings of a thousand moths escaped her lips in what must have been laughter. She batted her eyes, decrepit eyelashes jarred loose with each sudden movement. My throat was sandpaper, and I struggled to conjure up the verbage to express to her the way I felt.

Even as I opened my mouth to speak, my mother’s wailing voice echoed in to me as if from some great distance: “Bryan! Time to go!” I muttered my good-byes and turned to flee from the embarrassing scene. My heart thudded its own rhythm of relief as I wiped the sweat from my brow. Even as I fumbled past the sliding glass door did I hear her enchanting cry: “See you again, ya?” I promised myself that our paths would again cross sometime soon. But I realized I had never even learned her name.

“Yes,” I promised silently. “We will meet again.”