Grateful

Impatient! Methodically, Dave is eating breakfast in his bathrobe and reading the paper. A Taurus, he doesn’t like to be pushed, nor do I like myself when I am being pushy. He still needs to shower, shave, and get dressed. I know our plan to work together in the garden today will happen eventually, but I’m ready now.

With resolve I decide to begin alone. This summer we bought a 3-legged, 10-foot pruning ladder that is still by the apricot tree in the backyard. Its aluminum structure is light, and I am able to balance and carry it easily to the dogwood tree that is growing into the house next to the driveway. For weeks now, I have eyed this tree and am eager to cut one branch at a time to shape it and move it away from the roof.

I prop the ladder’s long front leg as close to the house as it will easily go, climb to the highest rung considered safe—about 5 feet off the ground—and clip what I can reach. A couple of branches come down. Only a beginning as I’m not close enough to reach the branches that are growing into the house. They really should come off first so I can see how to shape the tree afterwards.

Since it’s difficult to get the ladder close enough, in a bold move, I stretch the long front leg over the step and onto a concrete ledge about 3 inches above the ground. It looks secure. I move it and put weight on it to be sure. It’ll work. If it were to slip, it would move forward just a little, and I would move forward with it. I climb the ladder.

Again at the top step that is considered safe, I stretch as high as I can. With each hand holding one side of the lopers, I reach for the branch. All at once, the ladder jumps. It must have. It is no longer under my feet, and I am falling. There is no time to plan and no time to panic. A distant memory of a friend’s husband who broke his neck when he fell off a ladder comes to mind. I am Alice falling down the rabbit hole not knowing how my entire world might be different when I land. Flat, my back hits the driveway first, hard, unforgiving concrete. My head hits next. I call for Dave several times, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.

Slow. Slowly, I turn to my side and lay there. I can move. Grateful. I lay there for a few minutes until Dave rushes, concerned. “Are you all right?” I don’t know. I lay there longer. After a while I move my arm and am surprised that my hand is injured. Onto my knees and then my feet. My foot is sprained.

As I fell, without thinking, my left foot and right hand reached out behind me to protect my body and head, which would be the least likely to heal. Instincts that had saved my ancestors, which I have rarely if ever needed in this lifetime, engaged taking the first impact before my back landed, my head hitting last.

Dave took me to Urgent Care where I repeatedly told the story of my foolishness. My hand and foot were bandaged; the CT scan was negative. I was lucky.

Sometimes, I think of God’s grace and miracles. A friend told me of someone who fell off a step-stool and is now in a wheelchair. That surely could have been me. I struggle to understand.

What I do understand is that life is a vulnerable gift and that all things I treasure, including life itself, can disappear in a moment. I no longer take for granted that I am able to walk, to move, or to feel my body. I am grateful to be able to climb the steps in my home, which I would surely have lost had I lost mobility. I am grateful that I still practice in my office with its three flights of stairs and that I am able to continue the work I love as a therapist. I am grateful for Dave, and how he drove me to doctor’s appointments and that his concern for me was bigger than his annoyance at how, in my own stubbornness, I put myself and our lives together at risk. I am grateful for friends and family and that I can join them at my daughter’s house for Thanksgiving rather than for them to visit me in a nursing home or hospital. I am grateful that many things that sometimes worry me now seem less relevant and that waking up every day is itself a gift.

I still don’t understand why I was able to walk away, when someone else didn’t. Maybe the answer is as simple as it wasn’t my time; it wasn’t my lesson to learn. Or perhaps, I simply don’t know, the illusive bigger picture of life seeming foggy and unclear. What I do know is that I want to not forget this moment. I want to move more carefully in the world, to be more aware, and to never never forget this greater sense of gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Pearls of Laughter

Turkeys congregate around the Quan Yin statue in reverence, their wormlike skin dangling from pink noses.  With impunity they flaunt the rule for silence with their gargling warbles.

 

Deena and I are at a weeklong silent retreat at Spirit Rock for writers and painters.  Back in Deena’s room, she whispers that the green light on the smoke alarm glares at her when her lights are out and keeps her awake.  Determined to fix the problem and anxious that the alarm could shatter the silence of this sacred place, I twist it with a surgeon’s care to disengage the light, but without success.  Finally, we search for something to cover it with.  Deena nominates a pair of pink lace underwear.  With a couple of tacks, I easily cover the green eye so that the light scarcely shines through.  Like college students or kindergarteners, we barely suppress giggles, rolling on the bed, hands over our mouths.

 

In February, Deena let me know about the retreat and said it was perfect for us:  her, a blocked painter; me, a blocked writer.  We both signed up.  In May she called and said that she had a recurrence of her cancer, this time in her brain and spinal column.  She was given two weeks to live.  The following months—not weeks, she injected the latest in designer poisons to kill the disease before the disease killed her.  The diarrhea and nausea from this treatment caused her intestines to bleed, which put her in the hospital for a week.  She is now on a smaller dose of the same treatment. For months, I have imagined I would bring Deena to this workshop as a piercing memory of a lost friend.  Shockingly, she left me a message a week ago saying she was planning to come to the retreat with me.

 

Deena tells me about her latest treatment:  shots of blood thinners injected in her abdomen. She hates them and tells me that it feels like self-abuse.

 

“I’ll do it for you,” I volunteer.  “I give shots to my goat.”

 

“Would you?”  she asks gratefully.  Since it was time for her evening shot, she gives me the syringe with instructions to pinch the skin so that the medicine does not go into the muscle.  Then she asks, “So how often do you give your goat shots.”

 

“I’ve given them to her for three years.”

 

“Really, every day for three years?”

 

“No, once a year.  I’ve given her three shots.”

 

“You’ve only given her three shots, and you’re giving them to me.”

 

“I am.  I’m like a farmer.”

 

We synchronize the rhythm of our breaths, deep breath in, hold a moment, let it out.  On the out breath, I grab a roll of flesh with one hand, while I sneak the needle into her pinched skin with the other.  Slowly I push the plunger and withdraw the needle leaving another bruise to map the terrain of her belly.

 

“How’s that?” I ask apprehensively.

 

“It hurts like hell,” she says.

 

In writing class, Deena and I become partners in an exercise where we are instructed to take turns expressing what writing means to us.  When it is my turn, I look at Deena as she looks at me.  Like smoke or mist, the question fades to the background.  Her pink scalp is just starting to show through her wild silver curls.  We know each other’s secrets, celebrations, and tears.   I look at her face, her eyes soft, present, without expectation.  I want to say to her, “Stay.  I don’t want you to leave.”  Since it isn’t my life, and it isn’t my choice, I don’t know how to claim these protests.  Still, I feel the demand, sharp, in the pit of my stomach.  I have no words.  Instead, I sit with her, her warmth flowing over me like a summer rain.

 

Again in her room, Deena and I whisper, sharing our writings with each other.  Mostly, my stories are about my neurotic relationship with writing while she shares heartfelt words about her cancer and stories she wants to leave her son when she dies.   We are again breaking the rules of silence, and yet, these moments together are precious and feel fleeting.

 

I tell Deena, “I’m going to take the painting class next year.”

 

“And I’m coming with you.”   We seal the pact with a high-five and a hug.

 

After the retreat I drop Deena off in Berkeley.  While driving home, my cell phone rings.  It’s Deena.  “I think we forgot my underwear on the ceiling.”

###

In memory of Deena Glass – March 24, 1947 to November 22, 2009

Mom’s Miracles – Part 2

The rain beat on the windshield as the wipers did their best to keep up.  On a trip to Bakersfield to visit my grandmother, my mother and three children sang songs and played games as I did my best to drive in the storm.  All of a sudden, through a crack in the clouds the sun burst through.  A searcher of rainbows, I immediately started looking opposite the sun hoping for a brilliant surprise.  I was not disappointed and pulled off the freeway as soon as I could.    The children and I got out and ran in the rain while we pointed to the glorious colors streaming across the sky.  My mother sat in the car and shook her head.

 

The day of my mother’s funeral, it drizzled from early morning.  I had made plans that we would carry her casket to the burial spot.  When the service was over and the doors were open, I looked in disbelief.  The rain poured so hard that I couldn’t imagine so much water falling from the sky at any one time.    I took a deep breath.  The funeral director suggested that we might want to skip the burial and let their crew take over.  It was a practical suggestion, one that I might have considered.  But I didn’t.  Couldn’t.  This was my mother, in good times and bad, my only mother, her only funeral.  We moved ahead with the plans as the manicured lawn took on the look of a shallow marsh, the squishy ground soaking our shoes with every step.

 

Dave, my brothers and my grown children, all carried the casket as I walked behind with the funeral director trying to protect us both with my umbrella.  This felt like my mother’s idea of a bad joke.  It was just like her, and I considered being annoyed.  Instead, I said to myself, a rainbow would be nice, but rain is good, too.

 

Afterwards, everyone gathered at our home for an after-the-funeral get together to tell stories about Mom.  As I set out the potato salad and the pastrami, ham, and cheese for sandwiches, my son called me to the window.  Outside, there was a double rainbow, from horizon to horizon, dark on the outside and bright, like Oz, on the inside.  I had never seen a rainbow so brilliant before.

 

When I told Joanna Chartrand about this, she said that given that my mother was new to death, she must have had help from the ancestors to make such a thing happen.  My brother said that it was God’s blessing and nothing more.  Philosophers say that we are meaning makers and that many a coincidence is nothing more than that.  Truly, it doesn’t matter much to me who is right.   In that moment, all felt forgiven.  Old resentments, old hurts, my transgressions, and hers.  My heart full, I finished setting out the food for this celebration of her life.

 

Cornelia Marie Greer (AKA Mom)

March 31, 1921 – February 18, 2010

 

Paddling Together

Our fourth day in Baja, and I am only beginning to recognize the richness of this desert.  Our group is camped at the boundary between parched earth, sand, rock, dried weeds and the Sea of Cortez, a water paradise where porpoises play and whales call home.  Today, blue sky stretches from horizon to horizon.  The air is still except for a slight breath that refreshes my face and skin.

My husband, Dave, and I are on vacation with a group that travels here every year and spends a week on the beach about five miles north of Bahia de los Angeles, about 400 miles south of San Diego.  Peter and Vicky bring the food and water and their knowledge of the country and the sea.  We bring our sense of adventure and our willingness to camp in the desert with few accommodations.

Since we have been here, Dave and I have each learned to paddle a one-person kayak.  They are not difficult once you get a feel for the rhythm and the angle of paddle and water.  I also paddled in a two-person kayak with Vicky, one of our guides.  Kayaking with Vicky was an easy sport.  All it took was a little cooperation.  One of us in front set the pace while the person in back rowed at exactly the same pace.  Whoever was in back also chose the direction by dragging the paddle on one side of the boat or the other.

When Dave asks me to take a day trip to a nearby island, I immediately agree to go.  Ready for fun and adventure, we pack our lunches, fill our water bottles, push our kayak into the water, and we are off.

Dave starts in back so he can steer.  I row at a leisurely pace that suits my mood.  The water and sky paint an all blue picture surrounded by shades of brown and gray desert.  The waves rock our vessel gently as we slice through the water and head for the island.

“Speed up, we’re going too slow,” Dave directs me.

“Too slow for what?”  I argue.  “This is our vacation.”

Dave tries another strategy.  He attempts to speed me up by rowing just a little faster than I am.  The sound of his oar hitting the water just before my own is annoying, and I deliberately keep from increasing my pace not wanting to be manipulated into going faster without first deciding that is what I want to do.  Every once in awhile, we are so far out of sync with each other that our oars crash, and I stop in exasperation.  I think we must be some sight going across the water, and my face flushes not only with frustration but embarrassment as well.

“Let’s switch places,” I suggest when we reach the island.

“Maybe that will be better,” Dave agrees.  We shove off and glide to a nearby cove.  At first, it seems this will be an improvement.  Dave sets a quicker pace, which I mirror perfectly.  Our paddles are synchronized and stop clashing.  It is almost hypnotic, the lovely sound of the paddles slicing through the water at exactly the same time.  I forget to pay attention to how the kayak is changing direction and needs me to right it.  I try to do better, but it seems I am always a little late in the correction.  Our course looks like we are following the winding motion of a giant water snake.  A brown pelican dreamily flies inches above the water before lighting on it.  More or less, we are getting where we are going, and wherever we go, we are in a water utopia.

“You have to correct the direction when the kayak begins to go off course,” Dave admonishes.  “I know.”  I am trying, but this is becoming less and less fun.

When we finally get back to the island, I want a new partner in my kayak.  At times like this, I wonder how Dave and I have remained married for so many years.  We are such different people.  He focuses on the goal; I enjoy the journey.  It is a wonder that our differences have not made living together not only challenging, but intolerable.

On the shady side of a large rock, we eat our sandwiches, apples, and carrot sticks.  The tide is coming in and the current getting stronger.  We’ve been here long enough to know that smooth water can quickly change to waves that can threaten to sink a tiny craft.  Getting back is going to be even more challenging than arriving, and cooperation is no longer just a good idea that would make our trip less stressful.  At this moment, we have neither cooperation nor even a fondness for each other.

A while before the trip, we took a couple’s workshop and learned a listening skill.  I don’t like doing it when I’m annoyed with Dave, and find it the hardest to do when I need to do it the most.  But I am miserable enough to make some effort, however small, to try to improve things between us.

I tell Dave I am willing to listen if he wants to tell me about his frustrations.  Dave tells me that when he has an objective, he wants to arrive at it with a minimum of effort.  Goals are important to him, and even a pleasurable activity is not enjoyable if he is unable to move toward a clearly defined destination.  I realize how difficult it must be for him to do this seemingly simple activity with me.

He then listens to my side.  I tell him that it isn’t fun for me when he scrutinizes my rowing.  This is our vacation, and it makes no sense to me to feel under pressure about some goal.

Dave offers, “I guess the solution is for me to keep my mouth shut.”

“That works for me, but what’s it going to be like for you if you say nothing, and I do whatever I feel like.”

“I don’t know,” he says.  “Maybe we can work something out.”

I get in the back of the kayak, and we both start paddling.  It is not clear how we are going to cooperate.  What is different is that we like each other again.  Everything is not possible just because you like someone; however, prospects of finding a solution certainly improve when you do.  I am determined to stay on course and do better at correcting the direction, but this doesn’t come naturally to me, and we still are not on a steady course.

Finally, Dave has an idea.  “How about if I count to ten, and then we will both stop rowing while you correct the direction.”

“Counting on my vacation feels like work.  How about instead, you count silently to yourself and when you get to eight, you say O.K., and then we will both stop and I will correct the direction.”

“I’ve got it,” Dave announces. “I’ll say Do, Re, Mi … and when we get back to Do, I’ll stop and you correct the direction.

In this shared inspired moment, we head toward camp with the surf high and our hearts full.  As Dave says, “Do, Re, Mi,…” I sing, “Doe a deer, a female deer …” Rodgers and Hammerstein would have been proud.

Once again, I feel hopeful that we will make it, not only across the water to our camp, but through the course of time as well.  Dave and I have shared so much in the last eleven years, some good times and some times when we held onto one another just to provide comfort from the storms we have had to weather.  These mutual experiences weave like threads into our souls and define who we are.  With no other person do I share this common ground in just the way I do with Dave.  In this moment I realize how blessed I am he is part of my life.  Perhaps I will remember this next time we need to paddle together.

###

This was written in February 1997.  Last June Dave and I celebrated our 28th anniversary.   We still struggle sometimes, but somehow we have managed to work things out so that I can truly say that I am glad we are still together.

The Visit

We stood in the hallway watching her through her doorway opened just enough to peer at us as she tried to decipher who we were and what we wanted.   Since we had been visiting our son in Seattle, it only seemed right to visit Dave’s Aunt Marilyn as well.  But we showed up unannounced so that Dave could change his mind at the last minute if he decided not to visit her at all.

“Who are you?” She stared hard at us while she held her little terrier, who was equally suspicious of letting us in.

“I’m David, your sister’s son.”

Who are you?”

“Your sister was Leonora, she died forty years ago. I’m David, her son.”

It had been over 20 years since Dave last saw his Aunt Marilyn.  “She’s crazy,” was his good enough excuse to avoid visiting her.  She continued to look at us sorting through the cobwebs of 40 years.

“My sister died of cancer.”

“Yes, I’m her son.”

She let us in.  Her apartment had a dank smell, as if she had not opened the windows since she moved in six months ago.   Truly, I’m not sure why she let us in.  Later on she would send us a card saying that after we left, she finally realized who Dave was.  Perhaps she thought we were social workers.  Or maybe she was just hungry enough for company that the risk of letting in perfect strangers was not as great as the loneliness of no company at all.

“Someone stole the bong.”

“What?”

“The bong to the clock, someone has stolen it.”

A grandfather clock stood among unpacked boxes scattered along the edge of the room, while pictures propped against the boxes waited for just the right place to be hung.  We found a couple of chairs next to a small dining table and sat down.

“It used to make a beautiful bong, but three months ago, someone stole it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”  I wasn’t sure if she thought we could fix it or find the culprits and bring them to justice.  She finally found a battery, pulled the clock forward, and put it in.  Unlike ancient massive grandfather clocks, this one seemed like a simple box made of plywood with a face on it.  “You wait, it’ll bong.”  If she knew all along that all it needed was a battery, I wondered if she was playing a joke on us.  Or maybe she was testing us.  Her flat expression and intense eyes gave no hint.

I looked around her room of garage sale collectibles.  Over our table Hindu gods frolicked on a red tapestry alive with purple and yellow flowers and tiny mirrors.  A border of silver bangles framed the festive dance.  “I sewed extra bangles on the picture,” she stated plainly.  “It needed to be brighter.”

She then pointed to a picture hanging on the wall.  “How much do you think I paid for this?”

“I don’t know.”  I figured not much.  It looked like a garage sale special, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

“How much?”  She was persistent and not easily swayed from her question.

“Twenty-five dollars,” I lied.

She got more excited, “One dollar, I got it at a rummage sale.  It was a little dull, so I painted red flowers on it.”  The drab painting of browns and olive greens did seem to come alive with the orange red flowers dotting its fields.  I wondered if the inhabitants of the brown house in the brown painting would wake up one morning and think Spring had arrived, their dry blond colored wheat fields finally having blossomed.

The terrier, who had not been as daring to let total strangers in, began creeping from his hiding place.  “That’s Christopher.  He’s a nervous dog.  He was lost for four days when he was a puppy.  When they found him, they brought him to me.”  Christopher inched closer to me, his nose anxiously sniffing for signs of danger.  As he became more comfortable, Marilyn joined with him to give us a show.  “Sit!  Lay down! Shake hands!”  Christopher watched her intensely, eager to obey her every command.

“It’s easy to train a dog,” she instructed us.  “All you have to do is, whenever he does just a quarter of what you want him to do,” she jumped to her feet and began clapping enthusiastically,  “Just say, Marvelous! Marvelous! Marvelous!”  Christopher happily wagged his wiry tail as she cheered at his accomplishments.

I wondered what it would have been like to have Marilyn for a mother.  Probably unsettling at times.  Family stories describe her unpredictable, eccentric behavior. But I wondered what it would have been like if someone applauded me every time I did a quarter of what they wanted me to do.

Our flight was in a couple of hours, and we had to leave.  As we walked out, Marilyn showed us a bouquet of red plastic tulips in her windowless kitchen.  As she plugged them in, a red glow brightened the dreary room, softening the hard angles of appliances and counter-tops.  Marvelous, marvelous, marvelous! I thought.

“Marilyn, how wonderful it was to meet you.”  We embraced each other heartily though we had just met.  “We’ll be back.”

Mom – A poem

Through a crack in the drapery,
I witness my mother,
naked and vulnerable,
bathed
lovingly,
gently,
by her hospital aide, Pat,
washing her
as a mother washes her child.

She calls her name,
but my mother is fast asleep.

Full of fun Pat laughs,
“I got the magic.
Come on, Connie,
wake up.”
A light sleeper,
my mother resists,
her breath heavy,
deep,
like someone lost
in a dream.

Heartily,
the aide shakes her
frail body
screaming.

Commotion signals
gaggle of women,
vital signs,
must know
about lapse
to other world,
leaving behind
loose skin and skeleton,
an anchor
to mark a spot
to return to.

Wrapped
in loving arms,
Pat rocks
her, prays,
while I in
the background,
trembling,
waiting,
unknowing,
watching the woman
who has been my mother,
for good and for bad,
all her tenderness,
all her failures,
all unimportant
in this moment.

Eternity of minutes,
glazed eyes flutter.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.”
Her first words
a string of judgments
of her altered state.

“What is your name?”
an ordinary question.

She searches
all the words,
all the names,
surprised
hers not forthcoming.
Hesitating,
she finds a name,
Marie,
her middle name,
my grandmother’s name,
my favorite name.

New chapter,
her life
joining my life
as my life
once inseparable from her life
has just begun.
New chapter,
last chapter.
Hope
I am ready.

Written November 2005

Mom’s Miracles (Part 1)

February, 2010, my mother died.  It was a Thursday.  Our son, Jim, was in Florida, had just moved and had still not let us know his new address.  Jim was close to his grandmother and took care of her for about five years while she had dementia.  He was probably the one person in the family who got along with her.  He laughed at her jokes, teased her, and seemed to understand her and her motives in a way that was illusive to most of the family, including me.  After her mastectomy, Jim took care of her incision site and nursed her back to health.  He took her for tacos on Tuesdays as well as to her doctor’s appointments.  Since I had managed Mom’s money for 13 years, there was a tension between us as I insisted to pay for things that she had decided were unnecessary, like fire insurance for her house or the car payments for her Acura.  Jim helped me to notice how I was important to her in spite of her penchant for harsh words.

At the end of Mom’s life, she went on conservatorship with a conservator, Christine, who did not like Jim, his hippie ways, or that he had brought a mother cat with kittens into the home.  In a clash between the world of rules and the world of the unconventional, Christine, a sergeant in command, decided that Jim was a problem and had to go.  Before a month was over, she had fired him, and Jim moved to Florida to live with a friend.  Mom died six months later.  Since he had moved a week before, I didn’t have his new address, and I had no way to reach him.  The one phone number he had given me had been disconnected.

Jim deeply loved his grandmother and would want to participate in the funeral, would be devastasted if he could not.  But he didn’t know, and the funeral couldn’t wait.

On Saturday, two days after Mom died, Jim went to the post office to send me a letter I had requested of him several months earlier for a Christmas present I had put together for his grandmother.  This was a second book that I had put together for Mom, this one mostly pictures.  It was now February.  Jim arrived at the post office 15 minutes after it had closed.  A kind person there showed him how to self send the letter by overnight delivery.

I received his letter Monday around noon with a return address on it.  I had two cancellations that afternoon so I was able to rush to the post office and overnight to him a letter telling him that his grandmother had died.  Tuesday afternoon, after work, instead of going to his Capoiera class, which he would typically do, he went home, read my letter, and called me.  We cried together, and I arranged for him to fly to Sacramento. Wednesday he flew into town, Thursday we had the viewing, Friday we buried my mother.

Coincidences?  Maybe.  Beyond coincidence?  My mother manipulating (as was her way) the cosmos?  God’s blessings?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that Mom would have wanted Jim at her funeral.  I wanted that, too.   Having Jim join us, against unthinkable odds, I felt her presence, her satisfaction, her smile that the entire family was able to join together to bid her farewell.

Mom

About seven years before my mother died, I decided to create a book for her of positive memories and appreciations I had of her.  My mother was not always the best mother as I was not always the best daughter.  When I made the decision to do this project, I thought I would only have three good memories to write about.  Instead, one memory led to another, and before I knew it, I had five full pages.  Together with contributions from my brothers, this book was the best Christmas present she had ever had.

A few months before she died, we were sitting on the rocking love seat in front of her house.  Though her dementia prevented her from reading the book anymore, she had brought it out as a symbol of my love for her.

I thumbed through the pages and found a story that included Betty, her sister, and asked her if she remembered her.  She then said something I will never forget.  “You liked her better.”

I didn’t know what to say.  My Aunt Betty used to sing songs, tell horrible jokes, and taught me to bake pies.  I adored her.   Our relationship lacked any of the complications of my relationship with my mother.

But as Mom shared this pointed honesty with me, my heart filled for her, for her challenges as a mother, for her jealousy of her sister.  As painful as these words were, I couldn’t and didn’t want to deny this truth that neither of us had ever shared with the other.  We had never talked about how close I felt to Betty, or how distant I often felt from her.  Maybe I pretended that she never noticed, knew, or cared that I would light up when Betty came over.  How I had been sulking or sullen just before.

But in this moment, her lack of accusation, her defenseless simplicity, her bold candor hung between us with both the heaviness of a broken heart and the freshness of a Spring rain.  Instead, I lifted her fingers to my lips, kissed them, and tenderly held hands with her as we rocked together in front of her adobe house that she loved.

The Moment

December 2006, Dave bought an electric blue Nissan 350 Z, maybe a mid-life crisis car, maybe the car he had wanted after years of driving the family minivan.  After we moved in together in the 1980s, he sold his orange Mazda RX7 sports car and bought a station wagon, a practical car for a ready-made family with three children.  The Z is not practical.  The Z is fun.

The negotiations on the car took too long, and Dave told me to go home while he finished the paperwork.  He would drive home in the Z.   While I was sitting at the computer returning emails before I went to bed, Dave walked in and stood in the doorway.  Grinning, maybe swaggering, he invited,  “Want to come for a spin in my new car?”

Was he kidding?  It was already late.  Couldn’t this wait until tomorrow?  I looked at him.  With eyes lit up, he playfully beckoned me.  I wanted to say no, knew I should say no, knew I would be tired the next day.  Without enthusiasm, I said, “OK.”

Dave happily escorted me to the Z and took me for this spin.  It wasn’t until we were driving that I realized that this experience only existed that night.  By tomorrow, it would still be a cool car, still a fun ride, but the magic of this moment only existed this one time.  I will always be grateful that the curmudgeon in me didn’t have a voice that night and that I went on that once in a lifetime ride.

Last night, on the ride home from seeing “The Way Way Back,” Dave uncharacteristically rolled both windows down.  “Let’s pretend it’s a convertible,” he suggested.  The wind blowing my hair, we raised our voices to hear each other.  The ride home rekindled my feeling of that first ride in the Z, and my love for Dave. We talked about the various scenes in the movie while I complained, “Why did it only get 3 1/2 stars?  That’s like an A minus.  What could they have done better?”

By the way, make a point to see, “The Way Way Back.”  A low-budget, coming-of-age movie, it has an original story filled with well developed, compelling characters.  A must see.

Feral – Finale

Kitten4“What are you doing?” Dave asked. His voice belayed suspicion that things are only getting thicker.

“I just want to prepare for the possibility that we can’t find homes for them.”

“There’s always the SPCA.”

The door that had contained our guests for two weeks now stood open. Inside, curiosity greater than caution, wide-eyed kittens carefully approached the opening. Not five feet away, Sima, our scrappy Siamese, watched, her growl threatening as they approached, her bottle brush tail, tight, tense.

It then occurred to me to create a distraction. I grabbed a toy I had bought earlier. Kelly green and lemon yellow feathers attach to a bird like ball, which  attached to a yarn, which attached to a stick. As the bird bobbed and danced above the girls, they forgot about the pair of eyes that was evaluating Kitten5their every move. They reached, batted, jumped, fell over backwards, tumbled together into a ball as they ran into each other. The entertainment worked. Sima’s tail smoothed, their clown-like antics, clearly not a threat.

Dave sent an email complete with adorable pictures to the associates at his office. The two people who had seemed certain that they wanted a cat changed their minds. One person asked if they could be outdoor cats. “Not after all the work I’ve done so they could be indoor cats,” I retorted to Dave.

Yesterday, I left a message for our cleaning lady to peek in on them after letting her know they were looking for a home. She wrote, “They didn’t like me at all. They hissed and hid behind the toilet.”Kitten6

Of course they did. They have feral beginnings. Dave and I are the only humans they have known. Even though Misty, the light grey one, now runs to greet me when I open the door, and Nelcha no longer hisses when she climbs on the cat tree to be petted, Dave and I are still the only two humans that have ever approached them. If we take them to the SPCA, will they be the two kittens people pass by? Maybe no one will be willing to overlook their aggressive manners. What if no one sees how much they just want to play, be petted, and belong to a family?

So yes, these two are still up for adoption, and I believe would have an easy transition to another home. But until then, they will have a comfortable home with us, our two territorial cats, and the rest of our menagerie. Yesterday, Dave said, “If we keep them…”

Attachment. Commitment. One step at a time.