The Fabric of Friendship

It would be, Miss Hilda observed to my grandmother over hot buttered scones and peppermint tea, frightfully clever and exceedingly convenient if The Deity had thought to make skin flexible.

In what way, Hilda? my grandmother asked with a sigh.

Thick when you are most in need of protection, Miss Hilda said tarty, Thin when you are not.

Nana considered this for a moment then nodded.

Perhaps you're right, she said calmly, You don't think we can do it on our own?

Do you?  Hilda replied a little fiercely and my grandmother shrugged.

It wasn't clear whether Miss Hilda had had her feelings hurt or whether she'd hurt someone else's but she was troubled by something and my grandmother was wary.  There was precious little of the sugar-coater to our most prominent British transplant - she was considered a sort of displaced royalty by many in the village and was known for an acid although wickedly well educated tongue - she had no patience with dull wittedness or sloth, believed the overly emotional among us to be victims of genetic weakness, condemned drunkenness with a blinding passion - and yet would flog any man who might even think of raising his hand against a child or an animal.  She'd lived on the island for over thirty years and had never married nor lost a trace of her accent.

What need I of some mush mouthed, spineless, parasite interested only in securing his financial future?  she had once demanded when the subject of courting had been raised over a spirited bridge game, I do not adjust my standards for any man.  Better a solitary life than a compromised one!

And so she kept her dogs and her imported-from-England horses.  She lived quietly and quite privately in her gingerbread and turreted house.  She tended her flower garden and watched her posture, walked five miles a day - rain or shine, no matter the season - to maintain her health, and now and then wrote a smidgen of Elizabethan poetry for the Digby newspaper in between tutoring the children with dreams of attending Grade 12 on the mainland.  She was what her dear friend Clara called a woman of true substance, of steel-like convictions.  She was formidable and without a trace of self doubt.  To see her at odds with herself, about anything at all, was impossible, nearly unthinkable.

Is there something on your mind, Hilda?  Nana asked cautiously.

Certainly not! Hilda's tone was brisk and on the dismissive side but, I noticed, she didn't meet Nana's eyes when she answered.  And when Aunt Vi and Aunt Pearl arrived, she was uncharacteristically quiet.  It wasn't until the bridge game was finished that she made her speech.

Viola, she began, as I recall, I called you a mindless, silly creature with no more sense than a single celled amoeba.

Nana's jaw dropped at this and Pearl whitened noticeably.

That was.....unkind.... Hilda continued and my grandmother, determinedly staring out the window, cleared her throat audibly.

Miss Hilda glared at her but amended her words.

That was....cruel.....she said with a good deal of effort, and I had no right to say it.  Apologies are not in my nature, Viola, I make it a point to say nothing which would require them but in this instance, I have failed and I would like to say I'm sorry.

There was a silence on the sunporch the likes of which I'd never heard before or since.  Miss Hilda rapped her riding crop against her boot.

If you don't accept my apology, Viola, I completely understand.....she said finally and that was when my Aunt Vi - my sweet natured, timid, and shy Aunt Vi - got to her feet.

But acourse I do, Hilda, she said gratefully, It's forgotten.

The two women stood facing each other, not quite sure what came next.  It was an awkward and foreign moment, both being on opposite and unfamiliar ends of an apology and badly out of their elements.  It was Aunt Pearl who broke the tension with a totally unexpected war whoop - the three other woman visibly jumped - then all four broke out in relieved laughter.  The moment passed, slipping into the land of shared experience where the fabric of friendship is often tested before it's secured.

A Unicorn in the Strawberry Patch

Well, now, my daddy remarked casually from where he was standing at the screen door, drinking coffee and about to light a cigarette, There's something you don't see every day.

What's that, Guy? my grandmother asked, distracted by the morning ritual of starting a fire in the old wood stove and not even bothering to turn.

There's a unicorn in the strawberry patch, Alice, he said.

At that, Nana did bother to turn, she spun on the heels of her sensible shoes, her elbow collided with the edge of the trustworthy cast iron beast, she cursed, and an armful of kindling scattered all over the newly waxed linoleum floor.

Sally Forth!  she exclaimed, inelegantly pushing my daddy aside, What in the name of all that's holy is Sally Forth doing in the strawberry patch and what in hell is that thing on her her head?

By that time I'd gotten between them and could see Sally Forth, Miss Hilda's new mare - imported all the way from Sussex, I remembered Miss Hilda saying pridefully - peacefully nibbling her way through the wild strawberry field that bordered the gravel driveway.  She was pure white from forelock to tail with a feathery mane blowing slightly in the morning breeze and a dignified, regal posture.  On her head, there was a shiny, silvery cone, wide and rounded at the base and coming to a sharp point at the end.  We didn't know it then, but it was a witch's hat with the brim cut off, adroitly wrapped in aluminum foil and meticulously attached with a network of thick, white string.  With the fog still burning off, so that the animal was framed with a soft and misty light,the effect was startling real, a fairy story come to life.

Close your mouth, you'll catch flies!  Nana snapped impatiently, Now don't just stand there gawking, you two, go and get her while I call Hilda!

The mare offered no resistance when my daddy slipped a rope over her head and neck and coaxed her out of the field and across the driveway to the back door, tying her makeshift reins to the woodbox and producing a carrot from the pantry.  He snipped the string with a pocket knife and carefully removed her tinfoil horn.

Fourteen hands if she's a foot, he told me though I had no idea what that meant, And somebody put some thought into this little decoration, I'm here to tell you.  This is some work!  It took him several minutes to cut the webwork of string and detach it and when he was done, he smiled at me, nodded toward her.

Want to ride her? he asked and I thought I might cry.

Waiting for Miss Hilda to arrive and reclaim her, my daddy circled the mare around the backyard and I rode, feeling like a princess in a fairy tale and instantly in love.  She was sleek and smooth, she moved with exquisite precision and grace, she high-stepped and whinney'd and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

My ride ended when Miss Hilda arrived, striding down the drive in her jodhpurs, red blazer and shiny riding boots , carrying an English saddle under one arm and dark as a thundercloud.  She saddled and bridled the mare, thanked my daddy and my grandmother for keeping her safe, and crushed the aluminium horn under one proper and immaculate heel.  We watched her ride away on Sally Forth, horse and rider in perfect unison, a vision from an English fox hunting novel if ever I'd seen one.

Not everyone gets to ride a unicorn, I often reminded myself that summer, but beware if you do - there's a little magic in it.

October Light

Each autumn - as regular as clockwork and for absolutely no discernible reason - I get heavy hearted and sad.  I know it has to do with the quality of the October light on these late fall afternoons, there's something in it that seems to pull me under like a wave.  I can already feel it coming on and it's only three quarters through September.

Nothing is wrong or worse or out of sync.  Nothing is out of place or threatened or dying.  Nothing is missing or lost.  Nothing is altered or gone but the light feels different.  I feel shadows and dark corners, a very real sense of loss although for what, I have no idea.  Nothing I've found lightens it, shortens it or pushes it away. The sadness, the melancholy feeling, is overwhelming but insubstantial, as if I'm suddenly seeing everything through a veil.  I want to cry all the time.  It makes me a little crazy, mainly because it seems so mysterious, I suppose.  Because I can't explain it away, can't rationalize it or put it in its proper place.  It's a dark feeling, like standing on the edge and being too afraid to jump but too afraid to step back.  There's no bright side except that I know it will pass.

It's the quality of the light, no longer the summery brightness of July, not yet the grim gray of November, but some un-named month in some forgotten place where the late afternoon sky turns a stormy yellowish and all the leaves are fallen.  It's dead warm for this time of year and often there's a smoky scent in the air.  The very stillness is alive.  It feels over with.  It feels unknown.

It's just autumn, I tell myself, just a small window of time where the light is not what it should be, not what it's meant to be, not what it was or will be.

It can't pass too soon for me.

Wild Child

Here's something I've noticed - if you follow the noise, the panicky little footsteps that skid to a sudden stop and the inevitable hiss, the clatter of curtains falling or a tabletop being unceremoniously cleared - in other words, if you follow the mayhem, at its center there is always a small gray kitten.  I'm beginning to suspect it may be in her genes.

Not that the house was all that serene before her arrival - cats being territorially sensitive and in some cases, outright bullies - but it does seem to me that armed conflict has escalated and peace talks appear to be stalled.  I hear her little pigeon-like trill - I've come to think of it as a kind of Emergency Broadcast System warning - and I ready myself for whatever small chaos is about to be unleashed.  The older, established cats are weary of this nonsense, this wild child in their midst, they have no patience with her and no interest in her frantic games so they will only engage her in self defense.  As if to compensate for her diminutive size, their submissiveness brings out her assertiveness - she pounces, they run, she chases - and the house rings with unhappy wails.

She is a small cat, double pawed in front and low to the ground - I've sometimes wondered if somewhere in her history there might not have been some Munchkin blood - her body tilts slightly down so that her shoulders are not aligned with her hips but her lack of physical stature is deceptive.  She can, as the saying goes, rock and roll with the best of them.  

At other times, when I discover her peacefully curled up and asleep with the little dachshund, I wonder if she has an evil twin.

Beware of masks.

Mellow Moments

A small black paw reaches from under the desk and snags my sleeve.  Trying to focus on my writing, I absent mindedly scratch his ears but this doesn't satisfy him.  He meows loudly and insistently, head butting my thigh with considerable force for a small cat until I stop typing and look down.  Two wide open yellow eyes look directly back at me and I sense a little resentment along with a suggestion of stubbornness.  I slip my hands under his front paws and lift him into my lap but once there he immediately wants down.  He looks mildly offended that I would think he could be bought off so easily and exits without another sound except to take an almost indifferent swat at the the black dog as he goes by.  She's unimpressed and curls an obligatory lip but for once, doesn't take the bait and the cat is allowed to pass safely.  It's a mellow moment, rare in this crowded, competitive household and it doesn't last long.  Only seconds later the kitten and the old tabby clash briefly and this time the black dog does intervene, chasing and snapping at their heels as if she were herding sheep.  The small brown dog instantly dives deeper into the pillows and the drama-disliking little dachshund promptly trots under the bed to safety.  So much for mellow.

There's not a lot of golden rule in this house but for the most part I'm willing to settle for maintaining the balance of power and a superficial peaceful coexistence.  Unless it gets howlingly out of control, I try to let the little ones sort out their differences on their own.  It's a small house and there are eight of them and only one of me - a lifetime of Kodak moments is unreasonable - but there are still mornings when I dream (though never for long) of an animal free existence.  Of what it would be like to go to bed early and get up late, of buying actual groceries at the grocery store, of a knock at the door not bringing complete and utter chaos, of un-saliva-smeared windows and cat-hair free furniture, of not having to time an evening out to match an old dog's bladder.  Of the inevitable certainty that one day they will all be gone.

I'm not sure if I chose this life or it chose me or even if there ever was a choice, but I can't imagine living differently.

So I stock up on Pedigree and Blue Buffalo and flea spray and keep an eye on my watch.  I learn to assemble pet gates.  I keep track of heart worm medications and oatmeal shampoo and watch for holes in the fence.  I keep the peace and try not to play favorites - not very successfully since the arrival of the little dachshund, I admit - I clean kennels and wash bedding, tread carefully over small, sleeping bodies, wait for the random mellow moment and try to appreciate it.  As has been demonstrated to me recently, life can be cut short at a moment's notice - snatched away by a handgun or a lethal injection - and there's no going back.

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet ~ Emily Dickinson

Guns & Alcohol

The night of the killing, I arrived at the bar just as I had the night before, only this time I was met and turned away by a plainclothes detective in an unmarked car.

It's closed, he told me shortly, We're investigating something.

Is everybody alright? I asked.

Don't know, he shrugged.

But he did know.  He knew, as surely as everyone would know over the next few hours, that the owner of the bar - a five star pub and as embedded a fixture in downtown as the sidewalks - had been found shot to death that very afternoon in her quiet and quite ordinary suburban home.  He knew that her live-in boyfriend, chef of the five star pub, was on the run.

Over the next 24 hours, as police released details - multiple gunshots wounds, no forced entry - the music community went into mourning.  Stories of suspected domestic abuse began to emerge along with tales of convictions for several DWI's and aggravated cruelty to animals.  Chef was known to be gun-happy - everyone had a story of the arsenal he allegedly maintained in the pub's second story - and we all remembered the night he'd lost his temper with a customer and shot up the place.  That had cost him a brief stay in jail and the pub had been closed for several weeks but no one had been injured.  As someone who'd taken hundreds if not thousands of pictures in the tavern, I'd had my own run-ins with him and thought him a gruff, disagreeable, anti-social and arrogant old son of bitch but it'd had never crossed my mind that he might kill.  Social media thought otherwise, I realized, even before the warrant for his arrest on a charge of second degree murder was issued, there were dozens of comments from people who'd "see it coming for years" or "weren't the least bit surprised".  There were calls for vengeance in the name of justice, a handful of innocent until proven guilty reminders, but mostly, there was shock and profound sadness and a sense of it not being quite real.  A woman we all knew was dead and a man we all knew was accused.  Murder happens but not to people you've had drinks or dinner with, not to people you actually know.

On the second day, the popular belief being that he'd "fled the jurisdiction", U.S. Marshals joined in the search. More horror stories - combinations of guns and alcohol usually - surfaced and social media began adding tributes to the victim.  It had taken less then 36 hours for her to be sainted and him to be condemned.

On the third day, he's arrested in Mexico.  

Lying in bed and waiting for sleep, unable to wrap my mind about it and equally unable to let it go, I thought of my second husband and my mother, the too many to count times I'd come close to one end or the other of that kind of violence.  It makes me wonder if anything about a murder - or for that matter, any dynamic between any two people - can possibly be so saint/sinner black and white.

One Less Dog

She was a typical product of backyard breeding - bad tempered, unpredictable, willful, overly protective, suspicious, jealous, violently aggressive, insanely hyper-active, stubborn as a mule and sometimes mean as homemade sin  She carried chaos with her everywhere she went, made absolute shreds of my patience and most of the time I'd have cheerfully strangled her but without her, the house is just a little empty.  Funny,
the things we don't expect to miss.

In her thirteen years, she ate four pairs of glasses and three separate partial dentures.

Not a single squeaky toy survived more than four minutes.

She once consumed an entire 6 pack of Hersey bars without the slightest side effect.

Four sessions of obedience training were completely useless.

She could smell a eucalyptus cough drop at 40 paces, a lipstick at 10.

She hated being bathed and adored the hair dryer.

She had two speeds - asleep and warp drive.

She never forgave me for nicking a toenail during cutting.

She would bite anything with a pulse and required no provocation.  Until she was nine, it took three vet techs and a muzzle to approach her.

She could argue with a fence post all night.

Needed or not, she was a finely tuned alarm system.  Strangers never had a chance.

She considered cats the best of all chew toys.

She had exceptional chase instincts and limitless energy.

She was the poster child for everything you wouldn't want in a dog and she wore me out.

Every behavior modification drug we tried seemed to work in reverse.

And despite it all, I wouldn't give up and I'd likely do it all over again.  I may not have liked her much but I loved her dearly and it was hard to watch her die.  Knowing it was the right thing brings no comfort.  It's not rational but I can't quite shake the feeling that I failed her somehow.  It may be that small voice that whispers in my ear, What is there to miss?

It reminds me of a painful lesson - with people or animals, love is so often not enough.

Maya

Just a week or ten days ago, I could toss her a biscuit and she would effortlessly catch it in mid air.

This morning she doesn't even see it and has to hunt it down.  I watch her stumble on the aluminum food bowl and come perilously close to walking into the cabinet.  To be sure, I tear a slice of cheese into strips and hold it in front of her - she stares to the left of it, sniffs anxiously - but doesn't see it.  I kneel down, take her muzzle in my hand and look at her eyes, praying that it's a trick of the light, knowing that it's cataracts.  My little girl is blind.  Maybe not completely, surely not fatally, but certainly close enough.

Before we leave for the vet's, I let her and the other two out in the back yard.  She steps off the low end of the deck and trips, nearly falls.  The front steps are more than she navigate.  I lift her into the passenger seat and she sits quietly for this last drive.

The vet confirms the blindness and the blood sample confirms diabetes.  Her glucose is so high it doesn't register on the monitor.  The prognosis is not good - a special diet and daily injections for the rest of her life - and she'd still be blind.  He hates telling me this almost as much as I hate hearing it.  

I shake my head.

The injection is quick, administered gently.  She lays her head on my arm, her eyes close, and in less than a minute her heart stops.  It's a kindness.  It's humane.  It's the right decision.  I've never believed in extending life just because we can.

I miss her.