My smooth ride down 59th brought me along the Trolley Trail just as a sight that I’d never before seen passed the intersection.

A woman in a black skirt, white blouse, black checkered jacket and three-inch heels pushing a jet-black baby buggy talking on a cell phone clacked her way in front of my car while my mouth dropped and I jammed on the brakes.

Her soft brown hair brushed her shoulders.  She deftly wielded the carriage’s handles.  Her slow steady steps sent a little tapping into the air which drifted through my open window.  As I waited, she moved beyond me, north towards the Plaza.  I did not have the presence of mind to snap her photo.

As I pushed the gas to continue forward, another woman headed south on the trail.  She had to have darted around the buggy-pusher.  She ran at a good clip, in tight work-out leggings and a t-strap sports bra.  The orange of her running shoes flashed as her feet raised and lowered.  I let her by, then continued right onto Brookside, shaking my head, straining to see if I could still get a photo of the woman in black.

But she had gone, turning off the trail perhaps, vanishing.  The morning haze shimmered around the low bushes on the parkway.  I closed my eyes as I idled at the next red light.  Who wears a black suit to walk the baby at nine in the morning on the first day of autumn? The light changed and I accelerated, driving on, into the traffic, speculating as to her identity, wondering where she had gone and why she dressed to the nines to take a baby on an outing, who or what compelled her strange behavior.  By time I reached work, I found myself doubting whether she existed at all.

It’s the twenty-second day of the thirty-third month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.