Chicken Soup & Saltines

A glance at the calendar by my desk reminds me I'm in the 7th week of shingles.  I feel like a survivor.  That's when the intestinal bug arrives and lays me low for three very long days and nights - first there are chills and then sweats - I can tell I'm running fever and sleep is impossible.  I spend three miserable, wretched nights listening to a hard and steady rain and knowing I'd have to feel better to die.  I can't get the house warm enough, I can't sleep and don't dare try to eat or drink, every room looks like a small cyclone has come through and I don't care.  I begin to wonder how much more of what's left of my battered, old immune system can take.

On the fourth day when the weather finally clears - and warms considerably - I start to think I might live. Although my hands are shaking badly, my insides are trembling and I feel as fragile as spun glass, I leave my little sunroom nest and make a bowl of chicken soup, saltines, and room temperature ginger ale.  The dogs, both of whom have been constant companions and my only source of comfort, trail after me protectively.  They haven't left my side in three days and when I fill the bathtub and sink in, both sit quietly at attention beside the tub, watching and waiting patiently.

On the fifth day, I feel well enough to go back to work but my mid afternoon I'm regretting it.  My head is pounding, I ache from head to toe and once again I'm freezing even though it's over 60 degrees.  I tend the work dogs one last time and then come home to crawl shivering and shaking beneath several layers of blankets and listen to my teeth chatter.  I resolve not to come out til spring.

Most of the wretchedness passes by the following morning but I still feel far more delicate than I'd like.  A hot shower and a couple of aspirin help and I pull on as many layers as I can and reluctantly leave for work.  

I hate being sick.  Not just because it means being sick, but because it means being alone and in misery and feeling whiny and dreadfully sorry for myself. I dislike envying my friends who have husbands or partners or children to pick up some of the slack - it makes me feel petty - and I've never been able to reach out for help and inconvenience others - it makes me feel helpless and obligated - but there are times when I do look back and wonder exactly how awful it would've been to stay married.

Take a breath, I tell myself.  Let's not get carried away,

Second Hand Skates

“You can do this, “ my daddy told me as he laced up my second hand skates,  wound the muffler around my neck and pulled up my mittens,  “I’m going to show you how.”

It had snowed fiercely the day before and he and my uncles had been up with the sun to clear the frozen pond so we could ice skate.   Nana had tramped through the snowdrifts a half dozen times to bring hot coffee and sweet rolls but still it was bitterly cold and the wind made the trees tremble and shake  their snow-laden limbs.   By the time my daddy had half dragged and half carried me out onto the skittery ice, I was convinced I would never be warm again.

“I can’t!” I wailed miserably.

 “You haven’t tried yet!” he laughed, “How do you know?”

I knew because, despite the double thermal socks, my ankles had suddenly turned to mush, my balance was gone and  I had a new and profound understanding of gravity.  I knew because for the first time I could remember, I was doubting him.   Skate! I thought dismally, why, I couldn’t even stand!

My uncles circled around me - a wayward flock of useless, chattering crows - and my daddy propped me up with his hands tucked under my arms.  Uncle Bill took one mittened hand, Uncle Ernie took the other, and they slowly began to pull me.   Uncle Dave, surprisingly graceful for such a clunky, clumsy and nearsighted old farmer, spun like a dancer.

“Jist try her with one foot!” he called encouragingly, “One foot then the other!  Ya gotta slide!”

“Don’t let go!” I hollered, panicked at the thought of trying to navigate even a single step on those narrow blades, terrified that one or both of my uncles would desert me.  But they did let go.  I stood for a second, alone on the ice, pinwheeling my arms madly and then as I lost my footing and began falling backwards, a pair of arms caught me and I heard my daddy’s voice.

“Whoa!” I heard him say, “I’ve got you!”

He patiently set me on my feet again, allowing me to clutch at his shoulders while he re-wound my muffler and hitched up my mittens.   The uncles, except for Dave - still pirouetting and showing off in the center of the pond -  gathered around us.  

“Well, I dunno,” Uncle Ernie said doubtfully, “Maybe she ain’t old enough.”

“Maybe you’d just rather watch?” Uncle Bill said kindly, “You could stay with the aunts.”

“Reckon we could try again next year,” Uncle Byron - by far my favorite and best known - shrugged, “She tried and that’s good enough.”

My daddy rocked back on the heels of his skates,  his blue eyes meeting mine steadily but with a gentle smile.  The wind kicked up a little, stirring the surrounding drifts and sending small flurries through the frigid air.  I could see his breath and the snowflakes on his eye lashes.

“It’s up to you, darlin’,” he winked at me. “Either way is fine with me.”

 Maybe it was my stubborn streak - no doubt inherited from my mother’s side of the family - or maybe it was that I’d have rather taken a beating than disappoint my daddy but something made push my fear and shame aside and struggle back up.  

“It’s all about balance,” my daddy told me reassuringly, “Just get used to the way it feels.”

“Don’t let go!”  I cried as I wavered and swayed on the blades.

“Never!” he promised and gave me the gentlest of pushes.

The first time I almost didn’t fall. 

The second time I stayed on my skates for several  precious seconds before I almost didn’t fall.

The third time I managed almost a minute before my ankles gave out and I went down in a heap.

The fourth time I stayed up halfway round the frozen pond.

The fifth time I was skating  and crash landing into a snowdrift.

“Time to teach you how to stop!”  my Uncle Dave shouted and everyone laughed.   Uncle Byron brought me a mug of hot chocolate and a hug, Uncle Ernie and Uncle Bill cheered from the sidelines, and my daddy gave me that prideful, pleased  Told you so  look that I’d been trying so hard for.  It was a look that chased away the cold and the chilblains and made me forget about not being able to feel my fingers or toes.

 When it started to snow again, big, fluffy flakes that obscured the sky and swirled around us like Nana’s see-through curtains, we took off our skates and trudged back to the old farmhouse.  I walked in the footsteps my uncles made, my scuffed, white skates hanging over one shoulder.   In the mud room, we shed our winter coats and boots  and scarves and carefully hung everything up on the wooden pegs.  My daddy took particular care with my skates, drying the blades with an old towel and gently wiping off the white leather before hanging them on a peg away from all the others even though there were empty hooks all around.

 

“Your Aunt Ivy could skate like the wind,” he told me with a familiar sad smile, “As light on her feet as a leaf in the wind….graceful like….oh, I don’t know, a swan maybe…..or something in flight. Something very free.”   The sad smile turned very serious and I knew he was remembering his sister, the last born girl and the first of the ten children to die.  I had a clear memory  of a late night phone call and his dropping everything to pack and jump on a plane the following morning  -  there had been an accident and the other driver had been drunk  -  and my Aunt Ivy, at just 44, had been killed.  It had been one of the only times I could remember seeing  my gentle natured,  peace loving daddy angry.

Among the winter wear and baskets of new potatoes and corn, hanging in the midst of farm tools and seed sacks and the scarred old machine Uncle Byron still used to separate the milk and cream, high above the rows of muddy work boots, the milking pails and the empty old wooden crate where so many barn cats had raised so many kittens,  here hung my second hand skates.  The blades glinted and the white leather shone in the shadowy light and I found myself hoping that my Aunt Ivy approved.

A Little Royalty

Nana came downstairs, resplendent in a gold evening gown and matching slippers and carrying a tiny gold and completely impractical evening bag.  She looked all the world like Glinda, the Good Witch of the South and it wouldn't have surprised me if a flock of singing munchins had suddenly materialized on the stairs.

My daddy, equally elegant in white tie and tails and looking - well, there was no other word for it except dashing - made an extravagant bow and offered her his arm.  She smiled, pulled on her immaculate elbow length white gloves and slipped her arm through his.

Your carriage awaits, madam, he said.

And indeed it did.  I had seen it for myself, a long and sleek black limousine sitting imperiously in the driveway, complete with a uniformed chauffeur standing at attention.

Oh, Good Lord,Guy, my grandmother protested, The Lincoln would've done just fine!

For a Worthy Grand Matron? my daddy exclaimed as he draped her mink stole over her shoulders, Oh, I think not.

I didn't know much about the Eastern Star or the Masons except that my parents and grandparents were heavily involved and that Worthy Grand Matron was a Big Deal.  I'd once stumbled across a small ritual book - and gotten a serious slap for it - but it was written in hieroglyphics and odd symbols and didn't interest me.

Not for your eyes! my mother had snapped before snatching it from me and delivering a healthy backhand which had nearly rocked me off my feet, Learn to mind your own business!

I remembered about that forbidden little book as I watched my daddy escort my grandmother to the waiting limousine - it was a little like watching royalty - and wondered if there might not be a copy of it tucked inside that silly little gold evening bag along with her Kent 100's.  Having learned a little more about fraternal societies since finding the little book, I'd come to accept that secrecy was simply a fundamental part of their being and I'd had to give up the romantic notion that I lived in and was being raised by a nest of spies.

The limousine eased out of the driveway and drove away smoothly and I went back to making grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup in the Worthy Grand Matron's immaculate kitchen.

Stirring the Pot

In my dreams, I imagine a laid back, quiet Sunday morning with all the cats and dogs behaving well, no muss, no fuss.

In reality, everything is quiet except for the kitten who is racing around from room to room, trilling as she goes, looking to stir up trouble.

She's no longer a kitten, of course, but she's undersized and the smallest of the bunch with, apparently, the most to prove.  While the others are sedate and content to sleep, eat and sleep some more, she is a mini whirlwind of activity, a pot-stirrer on the prowl.  I watch as the tabby comes cautiously into the kitchen, moving slowly and looking for any sign of an ambush.  The kitten, perched on the edge of the countertop,
silently launches herself but the tabby senses danger and is off and running just as the kitten hits the floor. 
The attack fails.  Next I watch her slink and creep her way toward the long haired black cat curled up and sleeping at the end of the couch.  Just as she hunches down and prepares to pounce, he opens his eyes and hisses a warning.  The second attack fails.  The tuxedo cat then strolls lazily into the kitchen, stretches her full length and falls down on her back, a habit she's had since her own kitten days.  She rolls around, twisting and turning her body like a pretzel and pretending not to see the kitten covertly approaching.   There's a trill and a full fledged answering meow and the game is on in a tangle of black and white and gray.  The tuxedo cat breaks free first and darts out of the room with the kitten in hot pursuit but in a few seconds the kitten has reversed her course and comes flying past me with the tuxedo cat close on her heels.  When the dogs decide to join in the chase - they separate the cats and then double team the kitten in an enthusiastic game of tug of war - the whole thing begins to feel like an old vaudeville routine.

I break up the unlikely menage a trois and shoo the kitten away before they can snatch her again.  She gives me a resentful look - I think she actually likes these attempted threesomes -  and then strolls indifferently off.

The house settles down and I go back to my dreams.

When I wake again, the small brown dog is asleep on a pillow above my head.  The little dachshund and the kitten are are curled up together at my side.  One black cat is asleep in the cat bed, the other is snoozing at my feet.  The tabby is sleeping amid all the baskets atop the refrigerator and the tuxedo cat is curled up in the little dachshund's kennel.  

You can't mold reality to suit you.  But sometimes you can bend it just a little.

No Cause for Alarm

It's like an explosion - one minute the shepherd mix is curled quietly and calmly in a chair by the window, peacefully watching the world go by.  In the next, he goes off like a rocket being launched - there's an ear splitting howl, then he bolts for the front hall, hits the unlocked front like a storm trooper and is outside and in a frenzy before we can even react.  By the time we reach him, he's worked his head and shoulders through the bars of the side fence and is desperately trying to force his body to follow, all the while barking frantically and shaking like a leaf in a windstorm.  He is, in a word, unhinged,

On the other side of the fence, I see what has set him off - a shambling old man, bent and bundled up against the cold, walking an unremarkable three legged cur dog.  It's not the devil himself, not even a lesser demon or an unfrocked angel.  It's not even the apocalypse.  It's just a ragged old man and his dog, minding their own business and walking innocently down a public street. 

There's a certain lack of consistency to the shepherd so what set him off this time is a mystery.  The house sits on a corner lot with a bus stop in front and a rehab hospital across the street so foot traffic is plentiful.  The dog hates anything with wheels - motorcycles, bicycles, wheelchairs - but with pedestrians he's totally arbitrary and unpredictable, charging the same person one day and ignoring him the next.  Dog walkers, however, cause an instant and shockingly violent melt down each and every time and we dare not think about what might happen if he were to actually get though the fence.

It takes several minutes to distract him and we do have to play a brief game of keep away to block him from charging the fence again but eventually we manage to get him back in the house and calmed down.  We then discover a window pane he has knocked out - it's the second one in as many weeks - the pane itself is intact this time so a little duct tape puts things to rights and the dog watches the process with interest.  If you didn't know him, you'd see a curious but innocent onlooker.

It makes for an interesting workplace.