She was 96, or so it was said, though I wonder if even she knew her real age. She was tiny, as was more common in those days, perhaps due to epigenetic effects - you are what your grandmother ate - though very old people shrink in size as their worlds contract with age.

She flagged me down one day a couple of years ago as I rode past her house on a one lane dirt road on my quad. I was looking for a suspected leak in the main water line that supplies our local irrigation cooperative. She declared that she could no longer keep up her yard the way she liked, and that even her grandchildren were too old, or too busy with their own families, to help her any more, and that I seemed a likely candidate for lawn boy. And so, I was press ganged on the spot.

She fascinated me. She was not just tiny, she was nearly transparent. No extra flesh dimmed her glow. Her smile was incandescent, her every thought scrolled across her face making words not just redundant, but an impediment to communication. Still, we talked. That was the real reason that she wanted me to do yard work. She wanted someone to talk to her, to listen to her, and I was happy to do so though I truly didn't have even one spare moment in my already too busy life.

I work fast and hard - like I was killing snakes, as the old saying goes - so we talked before work and after. Every week we argued about pay. I considered it to be community service - we old boys should take care of our old mothers for the pleasure of serving, not for pay. She insisted on paying me, and payed at least three times the going rate for such labor. Every week I would do more to try to square the debt, and every week she'd pay more to stay ahead.

I'd buy materials with that unearned money to enhance and nourish her yard, and twice sneaked away after completion before she could pay. So, she started keeping a sharp eye on me as I worked, and brought me bottles of root beer before I could load my equipment and leave. We talked as I drank, which was what she really wanted. It shamed me in an odd way that an old women would, in effect, pay me to talk to her. So, I gave up. I'd pocket the cash with no argument and talk to her until she tired. Just the opposite of the old song - talk was small when they talked at all, they both knew what they wanted. This was no third rate romance.

She had various health complaints - of course - but otherwise seemed frail but fine. One week she was gone, in the hospital for a heart attack. One of her sons, an old man himself, lives nearby and told me about it. I thought that I'd never see her again. Two weeks later when I rode by on my quad there she was, standing at the end of her drive way grinning. She scolded me for letting her yard go while she was away, but the twinkle in her eye as she did so told me that she enjoyed the whole thing immensely. She had cheated death again as well as fooling me.

That was early fall, and there was little yard work needed except for leaf raking, so I saw her less often. Another old couple in the neighborhood who I help out from time to time told me that she had died. Old people read the obituaries every day and always know when one of them has passed.

I don't ride past her place anymore. It's broken now and I don't want to deal with that. I already have too many ghosts. It was false spring - which happens here mid-January each year - that brought her back to mind. I won't need to make time for her this year. False spring has passed and it's cloudy and cold again this week. Winter's back is broken but it's not dead yet and will thrash us hard before true spring finally wins the yearly battle. Sad thoughts for a sad season.