One woman

One woman serves in the sentence to incidentally mention the bearer of the secondary action, for whom there is no other determination. For example: "And then a woman came by and I asked her..." or "A woman and I were the only ones in the compartment." She is almost unrecognizable: she is greyish, indeterminate, it is difficult to distinguish her from another "one woman", who is also drab. When the time comes, you will become aware of them in the market. They come earlier, while the more colorful and attractive ones are still sleeping. They are younger than those when it is said: an old woman, an elderly woman, a grandmother. But only slightly less. They are not very slim and usually have cozy knitwear because they care about comfort. Their hairstyles are completely neglected - they tried, tried, and whatever they did and changed in the last ten years, the result was increasingly unsightly. And then they finally relaxed - gray hair grew a little (perhaps by two fingers), at the ends you can see the traces of some mini-vale that is no longer taken seriously. They have market equipment, a cart or a sewn bag made of sky or fabric. They are anonymous, they do what they have always done - they keep houses and kitchens, and empty houses and kitchens because the children have already left (to their apartment or maybe rather to Australia...), they keep life running so that, when you walk up the stairs, on Sundays in the afternoon it smelled like homemade biscuits and ajvar.

They don't look very cheerful with those bags and the morning wash in the eyes that still struggle to find cheaper spring onions. Their shoes are trampled, that's for sure. They are no longer mistreated with heels or real leather. The shoes finally serve to keep their feet from hurting, and for the rest... Behind each of them is a story: childhood, mother, father, marriage, children, bosses, wars, reconciliations and quarrels... Those stories convulsed and screamed, they bubbled up out of happiness and calmly influenced a course that seemed natural to them, tailor-made for them, so now they can say "you know, my life was...". It's like they're talking about a coat. But the moment you, in passing, register them as "one woman", they have no story. Their story was neutralized by gray and drab tones, sadness. Everything is kind of leveled out, every story could be theirs but you have no incentive to reveal them. The stage does not belong to them, the action happens to someone else, they can breathe a sigh of relief in blissful neglect. They are no longer waiting for that better life when suddenly, in the right place, everything will come together and they will be their best version.

If what Marina Jasenska claims is true - that one of our most important tasks is to become "one of the others", "one of the many", then one woman has achieved it. Surrender and victory. They moved to a higher class, they left their more colorful versions behind: the tall blonde, the one with good legs, the doctor from the other entrance, the one with two cute daughters, the one with thick hair and the step of a ballerina, that very nice woman - all it fused into this "one woman who came along".

It doesn't seem to happen suddenly. Who on earth believes that she is the "one woman"? But if you notice that you suddenly have some tenderness for them so inexpressible, so concentrated on the gray wheel of life, that tenderness, that noticing could be a sign that you are approaching the relaxation of those who have left the main battles to others.