The Tiny Indie Oasis that is Royal Oak and My Old-lady Hero

I was driving around this morning, sick of the overpopulated, generic, chain-store-ridden, dying auto plant that is Metro-Detroit, so I decided to go to Royal Oak.

Royal Oak is a little city that I love foolishly and unconditionally because it makes me feel like part of a secret, artsy world where people listen to non-mainstream bands and go to plays and attend photo exhibitions and support local businesses and have delightfully random literary and political conversations at little fair-trade-organic coffee shops like Bean & Leaf. Last year I went to a play in Detroit (Edward Albee's The Baby) as part of a literature class and the next day, I was getting some coffee at Bean & Leaf and I recognized the actor and actress who had been in the play, these two unassuming, beautiful, kittenishly playful acting students, and I got to talk to them, and ever since, Royal Oak and that coffee house have acquired an air of romance for me that I cannot reason away (and why would I want to?).

I know I must sound unduly delighted by all this, but really, compared with the land of strip malls that the rest of my state seems to be, Royal Oak is like a witty bit of stimulation in the middle of a very boring conversation. With a very boring person. Who very boringly talks about their health all the time. And whose boring fashion choices always seem to land somewhere between Walmart and Abercrombie & Fitch. And who will be on unemployment and welfare until eternity because of a chronic (and very boring) inability to magage their budget and refrain from spending at aforementioned strip malls. (See bailing out Detroit)

Anyways, so I was driving into Royal Oak, the sun was shining, and people were roaming all over the sidewalks. Except for one elderly lady in a wheelchair. She had two saggy arms on either side of the manual wheelchair (think pre-Power Scooter era) and was making a steady way down Main Street, a slightly wearied expression on her sandpapery face, Crocs on her feet, and a little girl on her lap. A tiny imp of about four with a sparkly headband in her corn-husk hair had her lanky little legs sprawled over the old womans' in a position of matter-of-fact abandon. Both were facing forward and both were silent.

I don't know why this affected me so idiotically but I started laughing and tearing up and in general developing signs of hysteria, so it's probably good I couldn't find them when I looped around, camera in hand, but I wish I could've gotten a picture. That is the old woman I want to be. That is it. I thought I wanted to be Bette Davis, but I've changed my mind.