Filed under: memory memorabilia re-membering, Writing | Tags: All SOuls Day, all-souls, Childhood’s end, family-circles, Halloween, hearth fires, holidays, lifestyle, motherhood, Remembering, The seasons Turn, Thin Times of the Year, Writing
It’s a couple of hours before dawn and I have laid and lit the season’s first fire in the hearth. I sit and write by lantern, relishing the fire’s light, warmth, smell and cackle. I feel like I can taste it too. It is a portal to memory. I am happy that November is here. Halloween is one of my favorites- a celebration of generosity and creativity and community, no one asked to be worshiped or forgiven, small gifts for everyone. It’s a holiday of humor and thrills and sharing. But it’s been years since I carved a pumpkin, my daughter, grown though still living at home, doesn’t like doing it and I haven’t had the heart to do it myself. My daughter doesn’t even like Halloween. I remember feeling so bereft when she stopped trick or treating, of course she was almost too old for it anyway when she stopped. But I was so sad- another sign that childhood was over. Trick or treaters can’t find our house tucked up away from other houses, so for a couple of years after she stopped, I would go walking around the neighborhood by myself just to see all the kids and families and say hello to the neighbors. I don’t do that anymore. Now I walk the halls of the school where I teach. The holiday fell on a Friday this year, which was grand. The day was pretty much given up to Halloween with an all-school assembly, a door decorating contest, classroom parties watching Hocus Pocus and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The whole school was in high spirits. So many laughs, so many great costumes, mostly homemade and very clever or fantastical- it was a memory making day for them. No faculty meetings after our early Friday dismissal- we were all to go home. And I went gladly, so so tired from the week, home to my cozy depression- that deep indentation in the mattress I can curl up in.
I spent the afternoon of Halloween moving between past and present as I cleaned the living room and dining room, making room for the change of season. I thought of childhood Halloweens, my own so far away now, and that of my daughter’s. I thought of all the costumes I made her over the years and our Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen that did Halloween like no other place I’ve ever lived. One trip around the block and you had a pillowcase full of generosity- full size candy bars, caramel apples, school and art supplies. Everyone so happy, family parties spilling out onto the sidewalks, Dia de los Muertos ofrendas visible in windows. When she was four, she wanted to be a crossing guard for Halloween because we walked every day to her pre-school and we became friends with her crossing guards. It was a pretty brilliant costume- warm, visible and she could actually stop traffic. I could see people inside their cars smiling and mouthing ‘oh look at the little crossing guard’.
She wore it to school on Halloween and we took pictures with her heroes Debbie and Emily. Debbie was delighted. She stayed our crossing guard for years. Jess’s elementary school was closer to us than the pre-school, so once she went to kindergarten, we only had one crossing guard. Debbie adored Jess and gave her gifts for Christmas and her birthday, and we did the same. She felt like family. Emily was the crossing guard by the pre-school. She was a very tall, imposing woman who was gruff and never smiled at anyone. She did not seem to match her name. She wore a lot of armor, but we always talked cheerfully with her and after a couple of months she wasn’t so suspicious of us. When she saw Jess dressed as a crossing guard, she broke into the first smile I ever saw. Then she teared up. “No one has ever wanted to be me before” she said. And then I teared up, my heart breaking a little. The picture I took of them together twenty years ago on that Chicago street corner sits on a table in my living room. I sat with it a long time in my hands last night, remembering. I wonder if the print I gave her sits on her living room table too. I wonder if we conjured each other’s ghosts last night.
I cleaned and shifted things around to make room for the outdoor plants to be brought in, a Fall ritual that marks the end of the sun’s season of heat. Warmth will be found indoors now. Warmth will be made inside. I moved the cat tree to the front door nook that is never used at all, and I carefully moved the cacti in its place at the half of the French door that remains closed. One of my cactuses is over five feet tall, getting taller every year and harder to move. It will now spend the winter in my sunniest window. I moved the succulents to the center of the dining room table where the sun hits in the afternoon. And I moved the heirloom pothos, all ten pots of them, to their winter place on the wrought iron etagere I was given in the fourth grade for my new room at 12 Eastover Court when Mom and PeteDad were trying for a fresh start in a new house.
The pothos spend the outdoor months on two iron plant holders that hang on the stone wall of my porch on either side of the French doors like sculptures, each holding five pots. These wall holders came from the porch at Beechgate, my mother’s childhood home in Anchorage, Kentucky, a home her father built in 1940. From there they went to the breakfast room at the Dartmouth Apartments where my grandparents moved to the top floor in 1964. Then they went to the back porch of Bird in Bush when my grandmother and I moved into the big house we bought from Uncle Jimmy in 1975. I had moved into my grandmother’s apartment after Gramps died to keep her company and because, looking back now, I needed a quiet place to mourn myself. The wall holders stayed there on that glorious, well-loved porch at Bird in Bush until Mom and FredDad moved to the Dartmouth Apartments themselves a couple of years after Mama died in 1996 and none of us ‘kids’ lived at home anymore. They hung on the same breakfast room wall two floors down from the apartment my grandparents lived in. A couple of years after Dad died in 2010, my mom moved to her current condo on Washington Square and the plant holders came to me, the plants too. And I believe, I really believe, that the plants are the ones that came from Anchorage long ago- cuttings rooted and repotted a few times over. I believe this and don’t want to find out otherwise.
It is a yearly ritual, this moving of the plants. Halloween afternoon and evening, I moved them one by one and thought of their journeys. I added needed soil, pinched back gangly summer growth, wiped off the spider webs, watered them and set them in their winter places. I also brought in firewood and kindling, my morning plan being just what I have done- to have the first fire of the season in the morning dark and sit beside it and write. How I love this turn of the year. The dark is a comfort. I am sitting beside the fire and turning over in my mind’s eye the little circles of my family’s geography, see them loop back on each other- all the houses, Halloweens and hearth fires, all the family no longer making their own circles but alive in mine.
I’ve been up for a couple of hours now and it is starting to get light. I can see the shape of things outside the French doors through the silhouettes of the cacti. I am suddenly aware of how hungry I am for coffee and toast.
Filed under: memory memorabilia re-membering | Tags: Childhood in the 1970s, Divorce, Fathers, Motorcycles, Visitation
It was Dad’s day, a day ordered by the court that didn’t always materialize, the Saturday we spent with Dad. It was supposed to be fun. He did things with us that he thought we’d find fun. Like visiting Fort Harrod, imagining the brave Settlers fighting off the murderous Indians. Imagining the brave Native Americans fighting off the invading Plunderers. He’d encouraged us to pick out something in the gift shop at the end, a souvenir to remember this day, evidence that this day happened. It was an extravagance my mother could never afford. Not anymore. So my brother went home with a rubber tomahawk all the way from China and I got a cornhusk doll dressed in blue gingham. I was ashamed of that doll, of my wanting it when I knew my mother couldn’t have bought it. Something I was given so my dad could feel good and my mom would feel bad. That doll sat on my shelf for years. I couldn’t play with it and I couldn’t throw it away.
This Saturday we were going to ride motorcycles. My baby sister stayed home or had she even been born yet? Memory is a big ole soup. Some things float to the top, others have to be dug up off the bottom, a lot disintegrates into the broth and flavors everything. I feel this Saturday was before we moved out of the big house when Dad came back and we were all going to have a fresh start in a different house, one not so grand as the one furnished by my grandfather. Dad was in and out for a long time before my sister was born. Losing jobs, wrecking cars, opening a liquor store in the West End to make an easy buck. Lots of schemes, wheeling and dealing I couldn’t have known about. I knew arguing, slamming doors, walking out, dad late, dad not coming home, dad sick in the morning so we’d be sent alone down the block to the tot lot, my little brother and I- age 4 and 6? 5 and 7? Kids, you go play until Daddy gets up.
Dad was into motorcycles. He rode with his friend Donny down at the plant, Donny who was a mechanic for The Outlaws. Motorcycles and gangs were everywhere then. Easy Rider, Evel Knievel, Hell’s Angels. We were taken to all the motorcycle movies at the drive in. One triple feature I remember was Evel Knievel, Hell’s Angels on Wheels and Million Dollar Duck. Something for everyone. Even a sado-masochistic extended trailer for a horror film called The Wizard of Gore that gave me nightmares for years. Seriously, this was family night at the drive-in? Yet, there we were, my brother and I eating popcorn on the roof of the car.
My mother hated motorcycles. Dad got her a lady’s Honda for a birthday present around then. I found out only recently that he had stolen that bike off a freight train with the help of his best friend, a man we called Uncle George. Mom didn’t want it, she told him to take it back. Dad was furious, yelling about trying to do something nice for her, something they could do together. I remember Dad rolling it back down the sidewalk to the alley. I remember him trying to lift it up into a truck and failing over and over until he let it crash on its side while he punched the garage wall and broke his hand.
This Saturday, Dad’s Saturday, we were going to ride motorcycles. I might have been 8. We went to Donny’s house to get the bikes and then to this big green space, maybe it was a large park outside the city. It had wide open fields and some hills with steps to the top. It was supposed to be fun. I knew I was expected to act as if I was having fun. There was the cooler of beer and soft drinks, the ubiquitous cooler. I don’t remember any helmets. Who wants a ride? We were supposed to sit behind our dads and hold on- Donny’s kid behind him on his bike, one of us behind Dad. I held back. I didn’t want to go. My little brother went first. They took off, tore around the fields in the grass. It was loud. It was hot. It was my turn.
‘You’re not afraid are you? Your brother loved it’ I knew that being afraid meant something bad to Dad. I would offend him if I was afraid. I let his friend Donny lift me onto the seat behind Dad. Dad told me where to put my feet. Told me to be careful and not let my feet dangle. The tailpipe would burn me badly if my bare leg touched it. I wrapped my arms tight around him, squeezed my eyes shut. He laughed, told me to ease up or I might crack his ribs. All the boys laughed. Embarrassed, I tried to relax my grip. The motorcycle suddenly lurched off, popping a little wheelie. I may have cried out, but nobody heard it. Loud and fast. He tore around the field, around and around, then I heard him say ‘Hold on now-‘ and the motorcycle shook hard up and down. He was riding up the stairs on the hill, like they do in those motorcycle movies. I couldn’t breathe, just held tight, every part of me tight- eyes, arms, legs, chest, heart. We whooshed back down the hillside and came to a stop. The motor cut off. There was something wrong with the bike. I was lifted off the seat, holding my legs far apart from the heat of the tailpipe. Set down on the ground again, I felt weak. I wasn’t sure I could stand long.
“Damnit. The chain’s come off.”
Donny came over with the boys.
“Here, we have to take the master link off to reset it.” Donny finds the link and takes it off, handing it to my Dad. “Hold this while I rethread it.”
They cracked open more beers before wrestling with the bike. We all gathered around to watch. I tried to catch my breath, hoped no one noticed me. Donny set his beer in the grass, laid down and worked at getting the chain back on. It was getting hot. There was some cursing, some laughing, a lot of grunting. Donny reached out his hand for the master link.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
“Goddammit- where did it go? Dammit. I must have dropped it. Kids, help me look.”
We all started pawing through the grass on our hands and knees, grabbing up handfuls, looking, looking, it had to be found. It became the most important thing in the world to find the master link. It held everything together. Donny began to get angry. Dad became angry. They snapped at each other. I felt my shoulders burning in the sun. My head was beginning to hurt, another migraine on the way. Maybe everything would be alright if I found it. I prayed to be the one who found it. I prayed that I could be the hero who saved the Saturday. Suddenly my dad began to laugh. He opened his left hand- the one holding his beer. There it was, the master link, held in the curl of his pinky and ring finger.
“I swear I didn’t even feel it” my dad said.
“You son of a bitch” said Donny.
Then they both laughed, on and on. The master link there in his hand the whole time and he just laughed.
Filed under: memory memorabilia re-membering | Tags: Cats, notes from a journal, Winter
It is Thursday, December 22, at last putting pen to paper after trying to disappear to myself in the break from scheduled duty of school and church.
The sky lightens, cars speed by on rain slicked roads. I read Ada Limón and watch the steam rise from my tea, a photograph of Anderson watches me closely from our long ago Foster Avenue Apartment. He’s just up from the basement, where he’s been drumming in a dark corner. He sits in the armchair I just left, my purse sprawled beside it along with the book I was reading while Anderson’s heartbeat came up through the floor, keeping me company.
Maybe no one is ever gone.
Maybe it’s impossible to leave each other behind.
This afternoon Olivia and Asher arrive. Peg doesn’t come until Christmas Eve. There are gifts to be wrapped, gifs to be made, blueberry compote to be cooked, disgraceful rooms to be cleaned. They are staying at Nonna’s house. Jess will join her cousins. Nonna is afraid that she can’t handle my stairs anymore, the approach to my house is perilous, so Christmas morning will be at her house, not mine. This makes us sad. It opens the door to a thought I can only look at sideways: It’s entirely possible that she will never step inside our house again.
Evening now. The storm has overtaken us. The temperature plummets below zero, the snows blow, cars creep along the road when one dares to make the passage. It’s a dangerous night, people will die of it. The cousins are all safely at Nonna’s, making Christmas cookies and laughing. I batten the hatches here at my house on the hillside. All the cats are in, save one. One of the two feral cats I have been feeding would not be coaxed in. Albert. I’ve done what I can to make him safe with shelters, even a new heated one that he seems to shun. But I worry I have not done enough. Old Henry sits in my lap, cradled by my left hand while I try to write with the right, sitting by the meditation window that is fogging up and icing over as I watch it. Winter in its first days is closing up the house.
Listen. Listen for the drumming from the dark.
Your heart does not beat alone.
Filed under: Art of the Day, memory memorabilia re-membering | Tags: Bald Eagles, Birds, Conservation, DDT, Earth Day, Endangered species, Environmental Movement, EPA, Kentucky, Ohio River, Pollution, Rachel Carson, WIldflowers
Over and over yesterday afternoon, eagles sailed in commanding circles over our heads, high and low, sometimes to warn off a Coopers Hawk, a Red Tail or a Black Vulture who shat midair at the close encounter. Mostly the eagles just wheeled and pivoted in the glory of the afternoon sun, taking turns on the nest to sit a spell longer.
I don’t live near mountains or out in the country. I live in Louisville, Kentucky a good-sized city on the Ohio River that grows larger every day. It’s the day after Tornado Day, a day you never forget to mark if you lived through it, April 3rd, 1974. 148 confirmed tornadoes ripped across 900 square miles in 24 hours, 30 of them were category F4/F5. My city was torn apart that day, but unless you know where to look, you wouldn’t guess it had ever happened. I’m sitting where I most like to be before dawn, at the picnic table in the Little Wood behind my house. Some of these trees made it through that long ago tornado that destroyed houses not a half block away. These trees are survivors.
I am on spring break, a teacher’s salvation. It feels so good not to be trundling off to school in the dark, instead I’m sitting here quietly until I drive my daughter to work at eight. I had a miserable night’s sleep, wrestling all night with anxieties and wretched dreams, but this morning I am listening to the White-Throated Sparrow sing its sweet song in the rising light of day. All around me wildflowers are blooming. Almost a hundred years ago, a woman who lived two doors down from me made it a habit to dig up flowers whenever she visited her family in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky and then plant them here in this little wood, this small sanctuary tucked away from the rest of the neighborhood. God bless her for it. They are still here, thriving- trillium, lady slipper, bloodroot, dwarf larkspur and cowslips are blooming now. I cannot help but feel hopeful, leaving the night’s fears behind.
After I finished my job at the church yesterday, I went to my friend Melissa’s house to see the eagle nest. She and her husband have been renting this house that sits high on a bluff looking over the Ohio. It’s part of the family compound owned by the little sister of my best friend in middle school, the friend who broke my heart in the 8th grade when she turned her back on me in favor of the cool girls. Lordie, how life folds back on itself when you grow old in your hometown. In the front yard of Melissa’s house there is a commanding pine tree chosen by an eagle pair for their nesting site. They started building in February. The nest is mostly obscured by the branches that hold it, it’s unknown if the eggs have hatched yet though they probably have. But it seems clear that the parents are taking turns sitting on the nest.
Standing below with my binoculars, I thought I could make out a white head deep in the nest, and then whoosh! Out the eagle swooped, making circles over the tree. It sang as it flew, a song I’d never heard before. My heart just thrilled to it. I can’t help remembering my longing to see Bald Eagles as a child, when they were terribly endangered. They had completely disappeared from Kentucky by the time I was born. All the pictures I saw of them came from Alaska or Canada. It seemed impossible that they should ever live in Kentucky again. I lived in Seattle, newly married, when I saw my first eagle in 1987. It was reported in the newspaper that a pair were nesting in Discovery Park, that enormous, wild, wonderful park that looks over Puget Sound on Magnolia Bluff. It was big news. The article didn’t say where in the park the nest was, but I wanted to find it so badly. One night I dreamt of the tree and the path that led to it. So, we went in search of it and I felt myself being led right to it, as if I knew where it was all along. There! The eagle nest! There! The eagle! We returned many times to look for them, to watch them hunt in the sound. I’ve seen Bald Eagles many times since then and it always stops my heart. To see them in my hometown makes me cry sometimes. They’re back! We didn’t kill them all! My daughter doesn’t understand, she rolls her eyes at my enthusiasm. To her, the fact of them is just a fact. Eagles on the Ohio River, big deal. Yes! Yes it is!
As a child of the 1970’s I had a stark awareness of the environmental apocalypse that was upon us. I have vivid memories of the rage I felt at seeing how casually people threw garbage out of the car windows as they drove down the street. Yes, that was a thing. Drink cans, bottles, bags of McDonald’s trash, cigarettes. God, the mounds of cigarette butts you’d find in parking lots and along the curb from people emptying their car ashtrays, the smell of car and bus exhaust- it turns my stomach to remember them. The wave of public service announcements about pollution at the start of the environmental movement worked well on the children of that decade- the “Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute” campaign, the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign with its “Crying Indian” (who was, in fact, Italian-American, but never mind). While the PSAs may have done little to change corporate behavior, they did succeed in influencing individual and family behavior. Children made their families clean up, I know we did. Trash was everywhere- the streets, the parks. The Beargrass Creek watershed was choked with garbage and the waters were poisoned, truly dangerous to wade in. Very little was able to live in those waters. I remember how we had to wear our Keds into lakes and rivers so we wouldn’t get cut by all the broken glass and the million pull tabs that lay like mines on Normandy beaches. I remember the orange haze of the air, a stinging veil that hung before your eyes. I remember the headaches and asthma attacks during field hockey practice in August. I remember the urgent air pollution warnings telling us to stay indoors, which don’t do much good when you have no air conditioning. I remember so much carelessness. The grown-ups just didn’t seem to care.
The Trump years were deeply painful for oh so many reasons. One of the worst for me was the rollback of so many environmental protections and the gutting of the EPA. The return of that utter disregard for the planet that reigned when I was a child. Things are so much better than they were, it anguished me to see the US slipping back towards that time. And things really are better- locally it is demonstrable that the air quality has improved since the Clean Air Act. That haze is very rare now. The waters are cleaner- there are beavers living on the Ohio River and along Beargrass Creek again. Yes, there is still trash, but it is much much better. And people who casually litter are outliers, not the norm.
It is easy to forget the progress that’s been made when so much darkness keeps piling on- mass shootings, continuing climate collapse, racism, dysfunctional government, the ongoing pandemic, the rollback of reproductive rights, the censorship of books, people and ideas, the attempts to push LGBTQ+ folx back into the dark closets of society, the reprehensible war in Ukraine. There is much to be unhappy about, too much to carry. It’s disheartening. But yesterday I watched Bald Eagles fly above the front yard of a friend. I know the fish they pull from the Mighty Ohio will not be laced with DDT. The eggs they lay will not collapse before hatching. Soon we will be watching eaglets spread their wings and take that leap of faith from the nest. The child in me jumps up and cheers, the old woman I am becoming cheers with her.
Filed under: Art of the Day, memory memorabilia re-membering, Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas Eve, Holiday, Light, pandemic, Wonder
It’s the day most longed for in childhood, better even than Christmas. It’s that delicious sense of being just around the corner from wonder and miracle, just about to see the true beneficence of the Universe. It’s a Holy Day of Expectation, perhaps better than the day itself- the unwrapped gift might be anything, the child coming into the world might shine a great light.
Once I knew the secret- that the miracle lived under my own roof- I was allowed to sneak back downstairs after my younger brother was tucked into bed (my sister was not yet born) so that I could become part of that miracle too. Back then, when we were small and the world was large, we put up our tree and left it undecorated when we went to bed on Christmas Eve. Coming downstairs on Christmas morning to see the tree ablaze with glory was the first magic I ever knew. And if the daylight revealed a rare and fresh snowfall- my goodness, what wonder there was in the world! What a glorious place to be! So much of the hard parts of life melted away. Of that I will not write, I will not conjure back into being.
Once I figured out from whence this wonder came, I was invited to be part of it. The thrill of being a co-conspirator, a fellow magician, a Christmas angel! I got to help decorate the tree, I got to set out the cookies and milk and beer for Santa, for by the time Santa got to our house he needed a beer. When it came time to set out the gifts, I was sent upstairs to bed. But how on earth could I sleep when I knew what was happening below? Listening closely, I heard their voices, the tone, not the words. I heard rustling, an occasional clank. I lay there calculating- could it actually be —- that I hinted at last week? Would my brother be getting the — he wants so badly?
In the morning, we sat at the top step above the turning at the landing where we could not see below and waited for the all clear to come from below. We rushed down the steps, only I’d hold back a step or two. My eyes were not on the tree and the generosity that spread out beneath it, my eyes were on my brother’s face. I watched for that moment when the glory sprung full upon him, as it would never fall on me again. But getting to see his joy made my own even sweeter. And so it has been. It became my practice to sit at the top step sometime around midnight every Christmas Eve to simply contemplate the unopened joy that lay waiting below. Whatever house I am in. However old I am. Being one of the Wondermakers of the world is a great privilege and Christmas Eve I breathe in the blessing of it.
It’s before dawn out here in the little wood. The unseasonably warm weather has called me out here. I feel much better having written a bit. The prosaic demands of the holiday obscure the poetry of it, obscure the soul of it, which I crave. Kept too long in the saucepan of checklists, I bubble up into irritation, my gratitude sailing off like steam. Our family plans have changed fifteen times since Sunday, as fully vaxxed and boostered members of the family test positive for the insidious Omicron variant. Time here in the dark, under the trees helps me recover my footing.
A photo has fallen out of my journal- an old black and white one that Mom gave me some months ago of Great-Aunt Virginia Cook and her infant daughter Carole. They are in front of their long ago Christmas Tree, hung with silver bells and tinsel. Aunt Gigi (not my real aunt, I only found out as a teenager) is smiling so beautifully, so much happiness radiates. A young widow, her horrible husband gone. She raised her daughter alone, working at a bookstore to do it. In the photo, there’s a stack of identical books on a table, with empty boxes set on top. Perhaps she is about to wrap them for gifts. I never noticed that about the photo before now. Many years after this photo, I would be one of the recipients of well-chosen books from her that would be touchstones for me throughout my life. Pickle Chiffon Pie by Jolly Roger Bradfield, The Tapestry Room by Mrs. Molesworth, Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt. Aunt Gigi scraped by, as I do, but she was one of the Wondermakers of the world. As am I.
The sky is lavender now- the light is coming back into the world and the birds are beginning to call to each other- did you make it through the night? I did! Did you? I did! We all did- Halleluiah! Merry Christmas, all you Wondermakers out there. Have at it.
Filed under: Eating Disorder aka Edie, memory memorabilia re-membering, Uncategorized, Writing | Tags: Anorexia, eating disorders, mental health, Mental Illness, motherhood, Parenting, Single parenting, Thanksgiving
It’s a sunny, cold morning, the day after Thanksgiving. I only have an armful of firewood left, so I’m sitting in the living room pretending that the fire is lit. It’s cozy anyway. We, my daughter Jess and I, took my mother and Jess’s boyfriend to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving yesterday. There were twelve of us, much larger than just the four of us last year at the height of the stay-at-home era. The year before that, we had travelled to Zionsville, Indiana to have Thanksgiving with my cousin and aunt. And the year before that, we were at my brother’s- a dreadful time I cannot remember without pain. Jess was in the full grip of her eating disorder and I was just beginning the long journey of seeking help for her, finding out what treatment options there were, trying to understand what exactly we were dealing with. I was plunged deep in darkness and fear and the agony of guilt. How could I have let this happen? Why didn’t I notice sooner? Why did I take that second job that kept me from home so much? Why can’t I make more money? How am I going to pay for all of this? What can I do to help? You dogpaddle, go under, sink down, fight your way back up for air. Over and over.
It was so very painful at home. Day after day, Jess closed herself up in her room, answered only in monosyllables or not at all, cut herself with blades she’d steal from my pencil sharpeners. She had nothing but contempt in her eyes for me as she fought all attempts to get nutrition into her before the silent, grim drive to school where I knew she’d eat nothing. Intake interviews, meetings with therapists and doctors, directions for what she should be eating, the endless looping fights, the ‘I’m fine, you’re the problem-leave me alone- I hate you-I wish you never adopted me- I wish you were dead’. No life partner to tag team with, no arms to shield me even a little from the attacks that seemed to come from an alien inside her. In the middle of this we had to celebrate Thanksgiving with extended family and with new family from my brother’s recent marriage. What a trial it was. Walking on tightropes, on eggshells, on broken glass, on hot coals. Any of those, all of those. Some of the family knew what was going on, most didn’t. I didn’t have the language to talk about it, didn’t want to cause pain to Jess by talking about it to people she didn’t want to know. She was a long way from being able to talk about it herself, a long way from admitting that starving herself was wrong. She was a long way from even being herself. Mental illness is the devil.
Sitting here in the peace of this beautiful day, the panic and fear I felt then rise right back up as I write. Within a week or so of that dreadful holiday, it was clear that she needed to go into residential treatment. McCallum in St. Louis was recommended. It was a race against her 18th birthday- I had to get her well enough by her birthday in February to recognize the severity of her illness and the value of continuing treatment, or she would walk away from it all and cling fast to her anorexia, choosing it over life. I’d then be in the position of taking her to court to get medical guardianship. That Thanksgiving was the beginning of very dark months.
I’ve always been an intensely private person. Something I have always kept to myself was my pain. A lifelong habit, a reflex. Snapshot: My brother and I have spent the morning down the street in the tot lot, sent out to play because Daddy was ‘sick’ and needed a quiet house. I was six, maybe seven, my brother was four or five. Dad had come to get us, calling us when he was within earshot. We went to him and then walked toward the house. Out of habit, I reached out my hand to hold his as we crossed the street and met the lit end of his cigarette. The cherry ember lodged under my thumbnail. I whipped my hand away and held my fist behind my back. ‘Oh baby, are you alright?’ he asked. ‘I’m fine’ I lied. I remember feeling embarrassed. I remember feeling it was my fault. I remember not wanting to make my dad feel bad, even as my thumb burned.
That Thanksgiving, the dark months that followed, I let go of that silence. I let the people at my jobs know what I was dealing with. I knew I needed to talk about it, be open about her illness. For her sake and for mine. I didn’t want her to be ashamed of it I didn’t want her to blame herself. If she was going to get better, she would have to embrace it, accept help, talk about it. If I was going to keep myself from coming apart, I was going to have to do the same. I had just started sharing art again on this blog as a practice, as a source of fun. Those drawings reflected a little of that early pain. I didn’t start writing about J’s journey with Edie, the demon Eating Disorder, until her return from residential treatment.
The writing helped, the talking about it helped, not having to pretend that everything was okay helped. My family was there for me. My friends were there. I was still falling through space, but not quite so afraid. There was so much to navigate- working with her high school, would she still graduate? What support could she get at school? Would they accommodate her half-day group therapy treatments? The looming 18th birthday- would Jess sign on to continue treatment? That was a terrifying day, skillfully handled by the doctor she loved. Jess signed the papers, she would continue therapy. My knees were literally weak as I walked out of the doctor’s office to drive to school. I was still working two jobs- full-time drama teacher at Walden School and part-time Director of Religious Exploration at 1st Unitarian Church. I was in the middle of directing Mary Poppins, for chrissakes, the all-school musical involving 85 K-12kids. I was told I should join a parent support group, should get therapy myself- but when? When? I wrote, I shared, I made art, I talked. It helped.
It’s been three years. She is in college now, studying early childhood education. She has joined a sorority, has a part-time job. She has worked hard, very hard at her recovery. There have been trials, setbacks, additional diagnoses, medication changes, trips to the emergency room, progress, many tiny victories, several larger ones. After three years, we are back at Uncle Will’s, back with family after a long Covid separation. It is Thanksgiving and there she is- Jess, herself. Smiling. Cheerful. Helpful. Funny. Beautiful. Proud. Her plate is full. My plate is full. Thankful, so so thankful.
Filed under: Art of the Day, memory memorabilia re-membering, Writing | Tags: Breonna Taylor, drawing, Flowers, meditation, Protest, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, solace, The Great Circle
Monday evening, September 21st 2020
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died a few days ago and like so many, I’ve been battling the waves of darkness that threaten to pull me under. It’s a truly awful time. I am not alone in feeling that our democracy is in real peril. I have taken it for granted all my life. I believed our system of checks and balances so carefully constructed and time tested that it could withstand anything, anyone. But I am wrong. The constellation of evil, the triumvirate of greed, bigotry and ignorance that is holding sway in positions of power, is sweeping all balance away. Every day we grow sicker, angrier, more divided as a nation.
I cannot write of it anymore this evening. I remind myself to breathe. I make myself look around, see where I am, see the goodness that is all around me. It’s grown dark. I sat outside in the dying light drawing until I couldn’t see my marks anymore. A clear cool night, the insects sing and bats take to the sky. The hummingbirds have not all left yet, but soon. Inside now, I sit in my dad’s leather armchair, the one he bought when we lived in the grand old house on Cherokee Parkway. I remember it was a big purchase, a long considered one because of the expense. It has a matching leather ottoman too. He bought it for the library where he could sit and read his papers, his endless line of Civil War books, Lonesome Dove. He was an infamously slow reader but a steady one. Dedicated. He always said that his reading was ruined when he took Evelyn Wood’s speed reading course in college. It took him two years to finish Lonesome Dove, but he kept at it. It makes me happy sitting in his chair, the worse for wear, the better for memories.
Drawing brings comfort, especially the land drawings. It was my friend Reba Rye who first showed me it was possible to gather up things around you with which to draw. You needn’t be dependent on what you can buy in a store. Such a simple idea and yet it was a revelation to me. You can take leaves and petals, press and pull them across the paper. Charcoal from fires, red dirt, certain rocks are good too. Lately I’ve been gathering plants on my evening walks- flowers that grow in the alleys, leaves along the railroad tracks. Sometimes I surreptitiously pull off the heads of flowers that grow on the edges of my neighbors’ yards and slide them into my pockets. I only take them if they won’t be missed, if they are drooping and ready to fall, part of a profusion of cosmos, sunflower or crepe myrtle. I’ve some to know which flowers and leaves make the best color, (weeds are the most generous green). Rose of Sharon and day lilies are too watery , they ruin the paper. Zinnias are too dry. You can only make marks with your thumbnail scraping an imprinted line. Roses are wonderful, and cosmos and sunflowers. Black eyed susans are terrific because you can draw with the hard brown head of the flower as well as the yellow petals. Poke weed berries are amazing- such a dark purple stain. You have to be careful or it will take over the page. I love the leaves of the hearty begonia because one side is green while the underside is red and you can do a beautiful blend with it.
When I get home from gathering, I lay my palette on a table. It’s hard to put into words why it is so satisfying to draw with this gathered beauty, to see their color transferred from petal to page. I draw imagined landscapes with the landscape itself and I am completely absorbed by it. It is a deep meditation that allows me to rest. I take my ink pens to define the shapes, add shading perhaps, shapes of its own. I don’t think, I let the color lead the pens. It’s another layer to the meditation, another part of the labyrinth. I may leave the drawing for days before coming back to it with the pens or to add more color. It feels effortless. It’s a conversation I’m having with myself, with the land, with being, simply being. There is no argument.
It is fully night and I need to turn my thoughts to bed, the book I am reading before sleep, the rest, the dreams that will come whether I want them to or not. The school where I teach is gearing up to have students back in the building for the first time in over six months, in a wildly different school day as we try to keep everyone safely distanced. There is much craziness to navigate involving the simultaneous teaching of students in the room, on video to different pods of the same grade level and students opting to stay at home on Zoom. I cannot begin to describe it all tonight. If I try, I’ll never fall asleep. If I check the news on Twitter, I’ll never fall asleep either. Better to move the pen across the page. Better to finish the landscape drawing. Better to read the words of a generous soul written long long ago. I am simply being tonight. Tonight I will not argument with myself.
This is the solace I have been seeking as of late.
Tuesday September 22nd. Walking the dogs before dawn, I see my old friend Orion in the sky and I know that the season is turning. It’s the turning I hold in my mind as I drive my daughter to her job at sunrise. My city is about to explode. Today is the day that Kentucky’s Attorney General announces whether or not there will be charges filed against the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor. The downtown has been boarded up again, troops have been called in to surround federal buildings. Businesses have announced they are closed today. The courthouse is closed today. Everyone expects that it will be announced that there are no charges being filed. Everyone expects there to be a violent collective protest in response. The city holds its breath this morning. So much pain, anger, anxiety, fear everywhere we turn. On the drive with my daughter we are quiet for different reasons. She is still half asleep, facing her long day only a moment at a time. I am thinking about the sky, the changing light, what I wrote last night, what we are facing today. I know now what I am seeking when I put petal to paper, I know what it is that I love. It’s being part of the great circle for a moment, where creator and creation are one. The energy of the sun brought the flowers and trees into being. The art I make from them becomes part of the circle, my impulse to create makes me part of the circle too. The earth spins on its axis as it circles the sun in a solar system that travels as one of millions or more in a galaxy that circles with numberless others within the ever expanding mind of God. The act of drawing (drawing out what? Beauty? The essence of a moment?) helps me step out of human time, that loud clockwork affair, and into God’s time. That which remains when all the clocks are broken, when there are no verdicts to return. I am not powerless there. There, I am home.
Filed under: memory memorabilia re-membering, Writing | Tags: Aging, Guerlain, Jean Rhys, Loving ONeself, Perfume, Quartet, The Blue Hour, Wide Sargasso Sea
On Monday night, close to midnight, I began a new book- The Blue Hour, a biography of Jean Rhys who wrote The Wide Sargasso Sea, a stunning and disturbing book that has haunted me since I first read it last month. In the preface, Lilian Pizzichini describes L’Heure Bleue, a perfume by Guerlain that figures in Rhys’ first novel Quartet and that was her favorite fragrance. “The scent itself is dusky, as though bought from an old-world apothecary on a forgotten street in Paris. Its hints of pastry and almonds make L’Heure Bleue a melancholic fragrance, as though in mourning for a time passed by. The curves of the Art Nouveau bottle, the stopper in the form of a hollowed out heart, allude to the romance of the years leading to the First World War.”
I put the book down and picked up my tiny research assistant- L’Heure Bleue was created in 1912 (my year!) by master perfumer Jacques Guerlain as a way to capture that magic blue hour in Paris before the sky finds its first star. That’s what I found out. And that you can still buy it. And suddenly I wanted that scent more than anything. I, who never wear perfume, was suddenly certain that this was my fragrance and that it would be mine the rest of my days. I ordered a bottle of eau de parfum from my bed before turning out my light to sleep.
In the days while I waited for it, I watched a video of someone reviewing the perfume. Nine minutes of a beautiful French man talking about what this perfume means to him, how it smells and how he wears it whether it’s for a man or not. I read up on Guerlain and the inspiration for the perfume. I thought about how much my relationship to my body has changed. How for decades now I have abused it, ignored it, hid it, and felt ashamed of it and how it looked. How with no one to love it, it has gone unloved and uncelebrated. I’ve taken so little care with my appearance- how I dress, what I do with my hair. I’ve stopped wearing jewelry and make up. I slumpf around in overalls, an old farmer. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror and don’t even care. Sweet, hardworking, talented, strong, resilient old body. I will do better. This perfume I’ve ordered feels like a secret I can keep with myself. I may look like a farmer but if I ever let you come very close, you’ll be reeling with the discovery of the secret garden that is in me.
Yesterday it came. I took the package along with my library copy of The Blue Hour out to the porch. I took some photos of the two together, the bottle still wrapped in its box. I took my time removing the plastic- when would I be able to smell it? Would it come through the box once the plastic was gone? A little, a very little hint. I opened the box and pulled that beautiful bottle out. Could I smell it now? A little more. I took more photos, delaying the moment I would finally know if I made a mistake or not. Then I did it, I pulled the stopper and breathed it in. Heaven. All I had hoped for. I sprayed my wrists, misted my neck. Oh my. I love the liveliness as it first makes itself known. But then it settles on you, settles in you. Becomes something else. Throughout the day I am called to tenderly smell my own wrists- ah, then the sigh of release. I did not expect to find the smell so comforting. It is achingly lovely, yes melancholic, the vanity table of a long ago lady, evening falling, the tinkling of crystal prisms hanging from my grandmother’s lamp.
I have been wearing it two days now and no one in my small family has noticed or at least remarked upon it, so that is reassuring. It is not obnoxious. It is my own secret with myself after all. I have fallen for this scent and its remembrance of loving and being loved. It fills my heart with longing and somehow answers that longing too. It tells me my own story of a lifetime of love. It is a reminder to love myself, to cherish this sweet old body, honor its journey and delight in its present. I was right to order this perfume at midnight, I’ll be wearing it the rest of my days.
Filed under: Faith, memory memorabilia re-membering, Teaching | Tags: Faith, Jesus, spirituality, Unitarian Universalism
Dear Reverend,
Not for the first time have I come out of a worship planning meeting troubled and puzzled. I’ve been thinking about it for days now and need to put some thoughts down on paper so I can look at them and share them with you, if you don’t mind. What I am troubled by is the dismissive and even belittling tone of the comments made by worship ministry members about the Christian tradition, specifically Easter and Christmas Eve Vespers. I have heard these remarks before, in other meetings and in the halls, often accompanied by a knowing laugh as if to say ‘Yes, well, we know better than to believe in all that’ and I have to say it hurts my heart and makes me sad. I don’t believe those remarks are consciously made to make anyone feel bad, but that’s just it, isn’t it? Isn’t this an inclusive community, isn’t the Unitarian church consciously welcoming everyone? All faiths and beliefs and lack of beliefs are welcome here, except those who follow the teachings of Jesus? I am puzzled. Remarks made by the Worship Ministry on Wednesday seemed to suggest that the inclusion of the Gospel stories at Vespers is done only to placate those who ought to know better and that’s plenty of Jesus for the whole year. It is an attitude of superiority that makes me very uncomfortable.
At the same time, I am grateful for the discomfort because it leads me to reflect on my own beliefs and I am surprised at my own warmth of feeling for Jesus and his teachings. I have been a spiritual seeker since I was a child, first embracing the teachings of Jesus in an almost progressive Presbyterian church. I went on to absorb lots of teachings from varying faith traditions, making it a point to attend different services whenever I could- from Pentcostal revivals in Eastern Kentucky to Sikh Gurdwaras in New Mexico. I’ve studied Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and Sikhism academically as well as spiritually. In my mid-fifties now, I suppose I’m more of a Sikh than anything (the word even means ‘seeker’), I embrace Guru Nanak’s teaching that all rivers lead to the ocean. Every morning before dawn, I practice my sadhana with Kundalini yoga and meditations with Sikh prayers. But I also observe Christian liturgical holidays and have found the richness of biblical scripture to be an endless source of reflection and inspiration.
I also understand the frustration many people feel with the seeming nonsense of a lot of Christian churches- the holding on to the ancient patriarchal language and dogma, the outrageously ornate and cryptic masses, the ‘my way or the highway’ road to salvation, the unforgivable use of cherry-picked scripture to judge and condemn others. Every time I attend a Catholic mass and the priest, all decked out in gilded glory, ponces over to the golden garage to get out the host to share exclusively with Catholics in good standing, it takes everything I’ve got not to stand and shout with my finger in the air “I protest!” I feel so very angry. And I cannot help imagining the dismay of Jesus if he were to walk into such a spectacle. I imagine him saying ‘This isn’t what I meant at all’. But see, maybe I’m guilty of fashioning Jesus in my own image just as others do. I could be totally wrong about what he meant when he broke bread with his friends the night before his betrayal. Whatever he may have meant, the communion I shared with my church in Chicago, the small but mighty Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ, was so powerful, so dear, so transformative that I crave it still and judge other communions by its standard.
I understand having opinions about the way the image and the words of Jesus have been used and abused over the centuries. I certainly have my own. I also have my own relationship to his image and words. To me, he was one of the ultimate teachers, a powerful yogi, so connected to the source of spirit that others were healed simply by being in his presence. He was a rebel. He embraced those who were outcast and considered unclean, not just with his words but with his body. He was a person of action, he made his words manifest. Love one another. Don’t judge each other. Don’t tolerate hypocrites and those who profit off the needs of others. Like a great work of art, his life and death raise far more questions than they answer. That’s why I like observing the liturgical year, taking time to ponder these things over and over, holding them up in the light to look at them from a new stage in my life. Take Easter Sunday. I never could reconcile the Easter bunny with the betrayal, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. It’s an awkward fit, this trying to piggyback the ancient church’s idea of what Jesus’s death meant on top of the even more ancient pagan rites of spring. Frankly, I like thinking about them both. It’s easy to embrace the pagan rites- thank you Earth! Not so easy to stomach the insistence of certain Christian churches that ‘Jesus died for your sins, so either you’re scott-free or you owe Him, depending on how we feel about you’. Of course, it’s not so simplistic, it’s a huge question to ponder. What did he die for? One way I have thought about it is that he died because of the sins of those around him. He allowed it to happen, did not run away from it. He used his own suffering, his own life, to expose those sins for what they were. Jesus, the ultimate performance artist. For me the greatest miracle is that at the peak of his suffering, he forgave everyone, he asked God to forgive them. And in doing so, freed his own spirit. It is hard, so hard, to truly forgive injury and wrong. Am I capable of that kind of forgiveness? I don’t know. It’s why I celebrate Easter, so I can think about it.
Remarks that dismiss the richness of Christian teachings are thoughtless, I think, and they can alienate congregation members who have their own relationship to them. Such a mindset doesn’t serve anyone. Yes, Unitarian Universalism is a thinking, rational faith, but I don’t believe we have to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Thank you Reverend, for reading all of this, I’ve enjoyed thinking about it. I’ll continue to keep my mouth shut in worship planning meetings as best I can, but the day may come when I stand up with my finger in the air and say “I protest!” Perhaps I am a protestant after all.
Filed under: Art of the Day, memory memorabilia re-membering | Tags: Cats, joy, Losing a beloved pet
It’s been pressing on me a month now. The loss of this sweet soul. Life barrels on, this last month especially, but he is never far from my mind. I came home late afternoon that Monday and opened the patio door to the cats as always, only there were only two. Oh no, I said out loud. I remember saying that out loud, I remember feeling my heart sink. I gave my Dashiel call, watching for him to fly down the hill as he always did, but there was nothing. I fed the others, walked the dogs in the darkness, calling and looking, calling and looking. I felt pulled towards the neighbor’s large yard, kept feeling like I was just on the edge of hearing Dash’s little voice. I strained to hear it. Nothing. The weather was turning awful, the temperature was plummeting, the rain was turning to ice and snow. Around the neighbor I went, calling. Front and back of the house. I went out again in my bathrobe, calling. I set out boxes with blankets in them in case Dashiel came to the door in the middle of the night and needed to keep warm. Several times through the night I got up and checked- was he there? Not in the night, not in the morning, not when I snuck home from school during my planning period so I could look in the daylight, not when I got home from school. Still I felt drawn to the neighbor’s large yard, thought I heard Dash calling from there. I texted my neighbor and sent him a picture, asking if he had seen him. The neighbor called right away. He was sorry, oh so sorry. He didn’t know it was my cat. Early in the morning on that Monday, my neighbor found Dash lying dead in the middle of their yard, being sniffed by their massive dog Tiny, a Great Pyrenees. Not mauled, just dead. My neighbor had one of his workers take the body out to their farm to be buried, he said. He didn’t know it was my cat. Dash had shed the collar I tried to make him wear. My neighbor was so very sorry.
Dash came to us, my daughter and I, in the early summer of 2017. I had just finished another bruising, punishing school year teaching theater in a school that used people up. It was a dreadful year for reasons both personal and national. I prayed and meditated for change within and without and it came in the form of a new place to teach, a place that I cherish. I needed to do some healing that summer. I needed rest and recharging and remembering who I was. I needed to get ready for a new incarnation. But the summer took a couple of turns. The first turn came when my friend Connie called and asked if I would consider fostering three kittens that she didn’t have room for but who urgently needed a home. I knew of one them already- a black kitten that other friends had seen being tossed out the window of a moving car in front of their house. My friends fished it out of the bushes where it had run to hide, but they couldn’t keep it because they were leaving on an extended road trip the very next day. So they called our mutual friend Connie, the animal rescue saint who works with the Shamrock Foundation to find homes for dogs and cats. The other two kittens were brothers, lured out of a derelict empty house in the Portland neighborhood. They were quite young and appeared to be all alone. Connie’s ark was full, over full I have no doubt, so she called me. How can anyone say no to kittens?
I love naming things. It’s a compulsion, an act of creation or more accurately, of recognition. Clearly the kitten tossed from the window of the car barreling down Story Avenue needed to be called Story. He certainly had one. Sleek, black, three to four weeks older than the brothers, Story was loving from the start. The brothers looked nothing alike, but they held their heads exactly the same when listening to interesting sounds. One brother was black with tiny flecks of light hairs, short haired and the smallest of all of them, the most timid too. He was called Speck. The last was our dearest boy. Fluffy, gray and taupe tabby markings, I suspected he would turn out to be a long haired cat. He was the one who pioneered hiding up inside the box springs of my daughter’s bed, to her horror. He was the one who darted to the door first when I came through to feed them. He was called Dash, short for Dashiel.
The kittens lived in J’s room until the stink from their litter box proved too powerful for her super smeller nose. They were moved to the TV room, shut away from the dogs and the other cats, who were none too pleased at this unpleasant development. And then the kittens were moved to my room (further alarming the resident cats) when the summer took its second, even stranger turn. Amos, a neighbor whose family I only knew casually from small talks in front of their apartment when I walked my dogs, came to talk to me, begging for immediate help. He and his family were being forced out of their apartment by a landlord who no longer wished to deal with them. People from his church were helping to secure another apartment for them, but it wasn’t ready yet. He showed me a worn manila file folder full of letters, receipts, contracts. He, his wife Patricia and their five year old daughter are from Nigeria and had only been in this country a short time. Amos is enrolled at the Southern Baptist Seminary, an institution I admittedly respect very little. His dream is to return to Nigeria in an evangelical capacity to bring the word and also community planning and stability to rural areas where there is so much turmoil and suffering. They live very modestly, unable to work much on student visas. They are supported by their meager savings and by the generosity of the church they joined in the US, their sponsors. Amos came to me to ask for shelter, a place to live until this new apartment was ready in a few days. My head swirled, the ground tilted, of course I said yes, how could I do otherwise? Still, I installed a lock on my daughter’s bedroom door, more to keep little Precious from being too much in there than from any other danger, but better safe. Amos and his family moved into the TV room and the kittens moved to my room.
It was only to have been for three days or so but it stretched into six weeks. This is a whole story unto itself, needing its own time and space in the telling of it. In short, the family slowly took over the house- the downstairs bathroom that had been my daughter’s was now theirs, the kitchen became Patricia’s domain, the house was permeated by the smells of the oily fish and meat stews she made which turned my vegetarian stomach, but hardest was the daily witnessing of the parenting philosophy at work on Precious who was never played with, never read to, never cuddled. There were a lot of tears. My daughter and I both did what we could to help Precious, and it seemed that her parents were relieved for us to play the role of her caregiver, but again, that is another story. We ceded ground. My daughter retreated to her room and then her friend’s houses and then went on their family vacations with them. I retreated to my room upstairs, eating there, spending time with the kittens. I shuttled them to their vet appointments, the Snip Clinic, played with them, fed them, slept with them. Dashiel fell in love with Mr. Darcy, the dog rescued by Connie who found a home with us in 2011. And Mr. D loved him back. I found homes for Speck and Story- Story went to the friends who rescued him in the first place and Speck went to a friend I had taught with. But I knew I could not be parted from Dashiel.
What was it about him that made it unthinkable to give him up? Perhaps it was his own insistence that he belonged. This was his home and we were his tribe. From the beginning, Dashiell adored Mr. Darcy, another refugee from Portland. While the other cats shied away from the dogs, Dash ran to them, especially Darcy. Dash would climb into the dog bed and knead Darcy’s stomach as Darcy looked up to me helplessly- What do I do about this? He bore it patiently. Over and over, Dashiel curled up and slept with him, tucked into Darcy’s curves.
Story went to his new home, Speck too and eventually Amos and his family left for their long awaited apartment, finally ready. Dashiel remained, expanded his domain to the whole house. Is there anything more delightful than a kitten exploring their world? It is a gift the young give the old- the chance to remember what a miracle the world really is, the chance to remember joy and feel it again.
Looking back I was always worried and fearful for him. Always it seemed he needed extra protection. He had a couple of viruses that required emergency trips to the vet- he sneezed, he ran fevers, he was lethargic. Then he was suddenly limping, his back end giving him trouble- had he fallen down the basement stairs? No one knew. Then he rebounded. I tried hard to keep him an indoor cat and succeeded for over a year. Dashiel always charged towards any life in the house. He tried to play with the older cats, ambushed them, ambushed the dogs, ambushed us, played with Darcy, tried to engage Johnny, our other dog. The other cats, who go freely in and outside, bore him no love. Piper Rose would have none of it and required a private place in which to eat her meals. But Henry gave in and accepted Dash as a playmate. So when Henry went out, and there is no keeping Henry in, Dashiel would try to go too. I did my best to block him, retrieving him when I wasn’t quick enough. Eventually I lost the battle. He went in and out with the others. Such joy was his! He quickly proved his prowess as a hunter and as an explorer. He did what the other two cats never managed- he found a way to get on the roof and reenter the house through second story windows. And when I had to set a live trap in the attic to catch the possums and raccoons coming in through a hole under the eaves, he managed to find that same hole, get in and get himself trapped, baited by his own cat food. Oh how that made me laugh.
He grew into a grand cat with the softest fur I ever felt, so lush and long. He spent a good deal of time grooming. He was fastidious, unlike his adopted brother Henry who really can’t be bothered. Henry wears a collar and tag that reads “I really do have a home” lest some well-meaning person takes him in when he’s out on one of his gallivants, thinking him some poor lost soul. Dash, in contrast, was a dandy through and through. His tail! As grand as a snow leopard’s, he carried it high, his proud flag of dandyism. He slept always on the bottom right corner of my bed on the folded Billy Bragg quilt, and it was a special joy to me to come into the bedroom to find him already there, his front legs stretched far out in front of him, one crossed over the other, as he was want to do. What a prince. He graciously let me stroke and kiss him, breathe in the smell of his fur.
One night he didn’t come back in from the outside and wasn’t there for breakfast in the morning. I had to go to work, but J found him later in the morning hiding under the chest of drawers outside the art room door. She texted me he was fine. But he was not fine. He could barely walk. He huddled under a piece of furniture in my office. He wouldn’t eat. Nothing seemed to be broken but his back end seemed to cause him pain. He had little pieces of bark in his fur. Had he fallen from a tree? Been clipped by a car? Had he been roughed up by a dog? I fed him broth and soupy wet food through an eye dropper. I watched his temperature. After a couple of days he was eating on his own, starting to move around. When he used the litter box I rejoiced. He got better daily. He showed little interest in going outside, until he recovered himself and remembered what was out there. And once again I couldn’t keep him in.
I trained him to come in the house in the evening by feeding him the much coveted wet food that I used to only parse out at breakfast. I would go out on the patio and call him in his special way, high pitched to carry up the hill ‘Dashy! Dashy!’- within seconds I’d here him crashing through the leaves as he flew, and I mean flew, down the hill to the door. I have never had an animal come to me so quickly when called. He was a blur, a streak of cat. No matter how dreadful my day had been, that moment was pure joy- him racing down, me swooping him up to hug and kiss, carrying him in to dinner. Such joy. And now he’s gone.
I fed him breakfast that Monday morning along with the other cats, and when Henry went out, he made a dash for it too. He ran right over into the neighbors, climbed their fence and probably ran to the dog who was running toward him, believing that dog to be his friend. Minutes later I walked right by there with Mr. Darcy and Johnny. In the darkness I saw Tiny over in the middle of his yard bending down to sniff something with interest. He must have something very interesting, I thought to myself, if he is not running to the fence to bark at us as he always does.
Oh Dashiel. I’ve been laboring over this post, been turning it this way and that, over writing, over thinking, trying to get a handle on why the pain of losing you is so very sharp and why it shows no sign of letting up. I guess it’s because there has been much darkness these past few years, navigating financial stress, too many jobs, my daughter’s mental illness, intense loneliness and fear. And there you were, flying down the hill to meet me or waiting there on the end of my bed at the end of long days. You were such a light. It’s your joy I miss, your headlong youthful joy at living. I will be on the lookout for that joy. If I can just keep looking, I will find it again. That was your great gift to me, sweet boy. Thank you.
The Fox at Dawn 