vanessa looks at the older woman in the light of her home and sees her truly finally out from beneath the gray-black widow 's veil joanna does not look so old now not in the matronly or grandmotherly way her age seems rather to be worn around the mouth and in the depths of her eyes she moves with such a casual ease she is one who is comfortable in her own skin she is the sort of woman happiest in a loose sweater and jeans and shoes to wear out in the garden she walks down long dirt paths on sunny sunday mornings before the world wakes and all the birds are singing for the rising sun she is a woman who seems not old but simply tired as though a deep sleep of some days or years would restore her not to youth exactly but to being again fully alive in the way of the young to be drinking in the world with such easy ardor .