The Old Lady Cat

 

The old tabby cat jumps lightly onto the love seat and settles herself next to me. It seems she has several things to say and with her face just an inch of two from mine, she stares intently, as if trying to read my mind. It was a little disconcerting when she began doing this several months ago but I’ve gotten accustomed to it and I stare right back. It’s all terribly serious and her eyes never waver. When she speaks, it’s short and to the point. I scratch her ears and after a series of retaliatory head butts, she curls up, tucks her paws beneath her body and drifts off to a cautious sleep.

She’s an old lady these days, well into her teens and having the expected old lady ailments. She doesn’t much like the Purina UR prescription catfood and she doesn’t always make it to one of the litter boxes in time. I clean up after her a few times every week - sometimes once or twice a day, sometimes not at all – and I don’t scold. I keep a careful eye on her but so long as she’s eating and drinking and not in pain, I’m not ready to let her go. She’s still active and agile and alert. Mild and intermittent incontinence isn’t much of a price to pay.

Perhaps one day someone will feel the same toward me.

My Mother's Child

 

He was every inch my mother’s child.

By the summer my brother turned 10, he was a vandal, a petty thief and a consummate liar. I hated him with every fiber of my being and avoided him whenever possible. Like my mother, he was short, stocky, and slovenly. He had a lazy eye and wore a perpetual smirk, was mean to the dogs, and liked throwing rocks, plugging up toilets and setting small fires. He was grimy and dirty and usually smelled of rotting food and stale sweat. Like all bullies, he terrorized everyone he could but at heart was a coward and a low fighter and never took on anyone who might break him. He was what my grandmother dismally called “a nasty piece of business” with no conscience, no empathy, no thought for others and no remorse for whatever harm he did. When I was young, he terrified me. When I was older, he repulsed me.

That particular summer, he’d been grounded for stealing cigarettes and selling them to the younger Albright kids and then re-grounded for trying to kill Aunt Lizzie’s chickens with a stolen pellet gun. In retaliation, he and the Sullivan boys poured bleach into her well and then set her barn afire. Uncle Shad and Uncle Willie saw the smoke and the volunteer fire brigade arrived within minutes but it was too late to save the barn – it and several chickens perished and why the fire hadn’t spread to our house next door or to Ms. Mary’s on the other side was entirely due to favorable winds and happenstance. It was all too much for my grandmother and the day after the fire, she had my mother pack a suitcase and ordered her and my brother home for the rest of the summer. There was a terrific quarrel but Nana refused to relent.

“I won’t have it, Jan,” she told my mother, “Boy’s dangerous and got no more sense than God give a fence post. He goes and you go with him!”

The scandal rocked the tiny village and cost my grandmother a pretty penny to have the barn rebuilt and the chickens replaced. Most everyone believed it had been intentional but nobody could prove it so there never were any consequences although Nana stayed very angry for a very long time.

Not all that long ago, I happened to find out that my brother died a few years ago. I don’t think he had much of a life but I couldn’t find it in me to either mourn or celebrate. I cared as much as I might care about a stranger who I didn’t know even existed and who died a half a world away.

He may have been my mother’s child but he was never anyone I knew.

Family Fraud

 

“Quelle surprise!” my Aunt Helen exclaimed, reverting as she often did to French when she was feeling particularly condescending.

Nana and her sister, my Aunt Zelma, had worked most of the day on the birthday cake and produced a masterpiece of a 3 tiered lemon cake, complete with perfectly lathered on pink icing and a discreetly inaccurate number of candles.

“How lovely of everyone to remember,” Helen added with one of her patented superficial smiles, just as if she hadn’t been dropping unsubtle reminders for the past two weeks and insidiously putting the fear of God into us all lest we forget.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Helen,” my Aunt Zelma said impatiently, “Just cut the damn cake.”

Aunt Zel was a tiny woman but all 4’10 and 90 pounds of her was feisty. She had been born with a club foot and had to wear a specially built up orthopedic shoe but even so she tended to a serious limp and often had to drag her bad foot behind her. It caused her considerable pain and did nothing for her disposition – she wouldn’t tolerate an ounce of pity from anyone – but she could also be demanding about getting her own way and more than a little sarcastic with her tone. She’d never cared much for her brother’s choice of a wife and it was no secret that she and Helen were frequently at odds.

The house slept ten comfortably, twelve if pushed, but we were busting at the seams that particular birthday with nine adults, five kids and to my grandmother’s great distress, an extra dog – my cousins had brought Twinkle, a high strung, nervous, spindly legged chihuahua with the disposition of pirhanna, perpetually underfoot and on all our last nerves.

“His vet says he has separation anxiety,” Aunt Elaine said apologetically, “We didn’t have the heart to board him.”

“I declare, Elaine,” Aunt Zel said sharply, “If I trip over that nasty tempered, little overgrown rat once more, I’ll fall and break my damn hip and then I’ll show you both some real separation anxiety!”

“Mother!” Aunt Elaine protested and promptly burst into tears.

“Here, what’s all this,” Uncle Les said, glancing up from his checkers game with Uncle Herb,

“Damn, I wish you women could get along.”

“Oh, shut up, Lester,” Aunt Zel snapped.

“Zelma!” Uncle Herb said loudly.

Uncle Eddie, normally the most mild mannered of men, rattled his newspaper and peered over it with a frown. “Gettin’ so’s a man can’t read a paper in peace,” he muttered. The remark drew Aunt Zelma’s wrath and she turned on him immediately with a scowl. “Mind your business, Edgecombe,” she said harshly, “Nobody asked for your opinion!”

“Really, Zelma!” Aunt Helen chimed in, “There’s hardly a need to be rude.”

Aunt Zel turned slowly, limped to the doorway of the living room and glared fiercely at the entire room, most especially her pristine sister-in-law. Aunt Helen paled under her perfect makeup and actually took a half step backward, one hand nervously fingering her pearls. I saw surprise, a hint of dread, and for a fraction of a second, she nearly withered. We never did learn what my diminutive aunt planned to say because at that moment, my grandmother laid a hand on her shoulder and pulled gently.

“Bread needs to go in the oven, Zel,” she said firmly. Simple words but enough to bring about a de-escalation of a potentially explosive moment. Aunt Zelma returned to the kitchen and Aunt Helen fled upstairs. The checkers game continued, Elaine dried her eyes, and Uncle Eddie returned to his newspaper. Nana sent me and my cousins out to pick blackberries and Twinkle dutifully trailed after us. Just another day in the life of a family who sometimes got tired of pretending.

The Company of Dogs

 

The Egg McMuffin never stood a chance.

Before I could take my key out of the lock and close the door, 70 pounds of pit bull launched herself at me and sent everything I was holding, including the Egg McMuffin, flying. I abruptly found myself straddled, pinned to the floor and receiving enthusiastic kisses. Notebooks, file folders, the mail, my purse, and my breakfast were all scattered everywhere. I was still trying to fight her off when she suddenly caught the scent of MacDonald’s and abandoned me, snatched the brown paper sack and bounded off like an overweight and ungraceful gazelle. I’m used to having an avalanche of dogs greet me but this was the first time I’d been tackled and taken down.

I picked myself up off the floor and gathered my things - no harm, no foul, no casualties but for the breakfast sandwich - then corralled the rest of the dogs and led them outside. It was like wading through a herd of over anxious cattle, they head butted each other and me all the way to the door then tumbled down the back stairs and spilled into the yard like a pack of snapping turtles. I settled myself on the top step where I could keep an eye on them, and lit a cigarette.

It was sunny and warm for November and then a breeze rippled through the trees and it began raining leaves for as far as I could see. A squirrel skittered down from one of the big trees and tight-roped his way across the electric wires, tail switching and chattering loudly at the dogs below but they were intent on patrolling the fence line for any sign of one of the several feral cats who prowl the neighborhood, and they barely noticed.

The breakfast-snatching female pit then appeared behind me, laid her head on my shoulder for a brief second and then body-slammed past, anxious as ever to stir up whatever mischief she could find. Her prime target is always the littlest pit mix but in a pinch she’ll take on the cur dog or the old pit, singly or both at once, depending on her mood. She’s an instigator, a relentless pot stirrer, and aside from the fact that she’s sweet natured with people and generally comes when she’s called, I can’t think of any other good qualities she possesses. She’s clutzy, chunky, needy, pushy, jealous, not terribly bright, death on designer shoes, and an overall pain in the ass. Oddly enough (or maybe not), she fits right in.

Still and all, the company of dogs. You can’t beat it with a stick.

If Only

 

She won’t eat, won’t drink, can barely stand let alone walk and breathing is a struggle. I gather her up and take her to the emergency clinic but in my heart, I know it’s a lost cause. She’s too sick to be saved and I think Michael knows it but can’t bring himself to face it yet. After a night in intensive care, she’s no better and it’s clear that the only kind thing is to end her suffering and let her go.

As dogs go, she was never much of a prize. She was anti-social, defiant, violently unpredictable, moody, and would snarl and bite without the slightest provocation. She despised the other dogs and would curl her lip and bare her teeth if they even passed by her. I’ve never known a more ill tempered or nasty little animal and yet, we loved her sorry, little ornery ass dearly. It doesn’t make much sense but it happens that way sometimes, just like with our own kind. I wonder if we are not, by nature, fixers - of junkies and broken people and recalcitrant, bad tempered little dogs. Love is never, ever enough but we don’t seem to be able to let go of the hope.

And so on a chilly, gray skied Sunday afternoon in October, Michael and I meet at the emergency clinic. He signs the euthanasia release, pays the balance of the bill, and we are escorted into an exam room. The little dog is brought in on a mobile stretcher for a final goodbye. And then, the moment she sees us, she struggles a little bit, raises herself to a sitting position, wags her tail and looks directly at Michael with those huge brown eyes and he immediately craters, comes apart at the seams and begins choking and sobbing and saying he can’t do it.

“We’re taking her home,” he manages to tell the vet tech, “I need to see the doctor.”

“She’s been in intensive care for the last 24 hours,” I tell him quietly, “If you take her home, she isn’t…..”

He picks her up, cradles her against his chest and shakes his head. “We’re taking her home,” he repeats shakily, “I’m not going to kill her.”

“Michael,” I say gently, “She’s suffering and she isn’t going to get better.”

“I’m not going to kill her,” he says again and there’s an edge of defiance through the tears.

I’ve known the man for a very long time and I recognize when to give up. I disagree with his decision but it’s his to make and as painful as it is, I understand. The young vet comes in and talks to us about multi-organ failure and how treating her kidneys hurts her heart and treating her heart compromises her kidneys and everything damages her liver. He stresses, as kindly as I’ve even seen it put, that she won’t recover but he also openly admits that she could take a turn for the worse in intensive care as easily as she could at home.

“It’s a question of trying to treat her the best we can without making one thing or another worse,” he says, “She’s a tough cookie but this is a very tough balancing act. We are all so sorry we couldn’t send her home healthy and happy.”

They remove her IV, wrap her up in a towel and we carry her to the car. Once back at the house, we make her a bed of pillows and cover her with a fleece blanket. When the other dogs approach her, she manages a weak but very clear growl then closes her eyes and goes to sleep without so much as a whimper.

“If only she hadn’t sat up and looked right at me….” Michael says helplessly, “Maybe I could have…..”

If only.

That was on Sunday. On Monday, we took her back to her regular vet and heard the same things, that there was no magic cure, that we were doing everything that could be done. We brought her home and about an hour later, she stretched out on her side, took one last breath and peacefully died. Rest in peace, little girl.

Not My Dog

 

She’s not my dog.

She lays on the exam table quiet as a mouse and submitting to the poking and prodding hands of the vet. Granted, based on prior behavior, she’s muzzled but watching her, I can tell that she doesn’t feel good enough to act out. The exam is over quickly and the vet tech whisks her away for x rays and blood work. I don’t expect the news to be good.

Ten minutes later the vet is showing me the x rays and I can clearly see the degeneration of the discs in her spine as well as her hugely enlarged heart. The blood panels reveal her liver and kidneys are damaged and her white count is elevated. She’s given an anti inflammatory shot, a new supply of Lasix and an antibiotic and all the while, even after the muzzle is removed, she doesn’t make the first protest, doesn’t growl or show her teeth or even struggle. She’s not my dog but it’s difficult to see her like this.

Back at home, she finds a narrow space between my chair and the wall and curls up to go to sleep. The other dogs seem to sense that she needs to be left alone and they watch her from a distance but don’t try to bother her. Before I leave, I check that she has water, try tempting her with a hot dog, and carry her outside and back in. She finds the same space and goes back to sleep.

The following morning, she’s the first thing I check on and I’m relieved to see her up and walking more normally and although she doesn’t bark her usual welcome, she is wagging her tail and appears perkier. She’s not interested in eating but she does stop at the water bowl before I carry her outside. Michael tells me she did eat a little hamburger and a spoonful or two of milkshake the night before. It’s not much but it’s a start. Later he’ll get her chicken nuggets, he tells me. Sounds like a plan, I tell him, be sure she takes her pill with them.

Awful lot of trouble and worry for a dog that isn’t mine.

Disorder in the Air

 

I don’t need a calendar to tell me it’s October. There’s a stillness, a softness really, to the days and a gentle magic in the hazy, late afternoon light. There’s melancholy in the air and it wraps itself around everything like a cloud of chiffon. I’ve been expecting it. The trees are beginning to lose their leaves, stretching their soon-to-be bare branches like skeleton fingers across the skies.

Witches and ghosts and goblins and black cats are showing up on front porches and doorsteps all through the neighborhood. Halloween is just two weeks away and in the pre-virus world, every school parking lot and churchyard would soon have a Pumpkin Patch with scarecrows and hay bales and wheelbarrows and little ones trying out colorful trick or treat costumes. This year, though, Halloween is likely to be just one more casualty of the virus. Trick or treat, indeed.

Meanwhile there’s this melancholy. It settles in my bones and makes me feel weepy. It’s sorrow and sadness and regret and the only comfort I can find is knowing that it will pass with November or a sudden cold front, whichever comes first. I’ve never understood it, never been able to figure out why it’s so reliable and precise, like a fifth season. I’ve never had an October without it, not even as a child when I was too young to see it clearly and couldn’t find the words to tell my daddy why I felt so unhappy. I’d thought that this autumn season might be different with the country so uncertain and upside down and – from all I can see – parts of it so determined to self destruct but no. The very first afternoon of October, I glanced out the window and saw how the light was changed and suddenly felt a wave of resignation wash over me. Not even a global pandemic can stand in the way of a determined siege of melancholy.

The oddest thing is that there’s nothing particularly wrong or different or more threatening than there was on the last day of September. It’s annoying to feel so inarticulate and helpless about what is, essentially, a mood, so I trudge on, trusting that time will take care of it and reminding myself that nothing troubles us so much as our own thoughts, disordered and wrong as they may be.

Counting Cats

 

The stray cat streaked across the lawn of the house next door and the work dogs avalanche’d past me and hit the fence like a squadron of stormtroopers. Unable to reach the cat, they instantly turned on one another and mayhem immediately ensued. Everything was teeth and claws, saliva and blood, and a noise level that rivaled controlled demolition, but I had seen the cat first and was prepared. When the water hose didn’t work, I had to disentangle them with a shovel and all the while the cat watched from a safe distance, imperious and contemptuous as only a cat can be. There’s nothing so annoying as a smirking cat and I confess the thought of turning the hose on her did cross my mind but I settled for rattling the chain link at her and after a few seconds, she dismissed me and wandered off.

I’ve always been a cat person. Counting the 4 that currently live with me, I’ve shared my life with a total of 19 of them so far. Each was his or her own cat with a distinct personality. Some were affectionate, some were distant. Some were sweet tempered and shy, some were disagreeable and sullen. Most all lived long and healthy lives and each one was irreplaceable. They all broke my heart one way or another.

I worry about the strays that live in the properties adjoining and behind the agency. They are mostly if not completely feral and perpetually at risk from dogs, traffic, sickness, hunger and weather. And yet they survive and sometimes even thrive. Stubborn creatures, cats, stubborn and stoic, proud and fierce and independent minded. You take them on their own terms or not at all.

For all my little ones who graced my life……. Sometimes I recite their names to help me fall asleep.

Tiffany

Sassafrass

Amanda

Pooka

Magic

Murray

Sugar Bear

Sara Jane

Patchwork

Nicodemus

Willie

Mike

Widget

Chloe

Cassidy

Muggs

Smudge

Zackary

Suki

Lizzie

Mischief

Ronnie, Lamar and Me

 

On the sixth day of suffocating heat and wet wool blanket humidity, Ronnie and Lamar arrive to save the day with a brand new central air unit. How I have not lost ten pounds is a mystery to me and I can’t remember being so glad to see a work crew. The climate gods are apparently feeling generous as this is the first overcast and relatively cool morning we’ve had in a week. The ancient York unit is disassembled and loaded onto a truck to go wherever old air conditioners go to die and by midday, a trim and clean looking Trane has taken its place. Cool air is suddenly flowing through the house. The dogs are delirious and I’m finally able to breathe without feeling like I’m underwater.

Ronnie and Lamar mask, glove and knee pad up then remove a section of
latticework and vanish into the depths of the under-the-house ductwork. They emerge late in the day, looking a lot like Kentucky coal miners after a mine collapse, pack their gear and tell me they’ll see me in the morning. They spend the entire second day navigating the dark, bug, debris and rat infested crawl spaces. Old ductwork is torn out and replaced, the new is wrapped and secured against rodents and other neighborhood wildlife. There there’s not much conversation but Ronnie whistles most of the time and Lamar raps along with the portable radio he sets up. It’s nasty work in a nasty environment, filthy, inhumanly hot, and awkward to move around in, but there’s not a word of complaint from either of them. I haven’t a clue how much they make per hour, but I’m absolutely certain it’s not enough for what they have to do. At some point late in the afternoon of the second day, I realize I don’t hear the radio anymore and when I go to look, I discover they’ve picked up all the trash and insulation and debris, replaced the latticework, re-locked the back gate and disappeared without a trace. Except for the blessed, quiet hum of the new unit, you’d never know they’d been there. I make a mental note to send them a positive review for their website. It’s too easy to criticize shoddy work or sullen workers – the good people need to be recognized and appreciated just as easily and as often.

We might all be better off if we still played in the dirt every now and then.

Baby in the Choir Loft

 

The first sign of trouble was a faint but distinct cry from the choir loft. A head or two glanced up but mostly nobody paid any mind.

The second was a when a hymnal whizzed past the pastor’s head and smacked Uncle Shad Nickerson, sitting prominently in the first pew, on the knee. That got everybody’s attention but before there was time for anyone to react, there was a third sign.

“Great God Almighty!” Jacob Sullivan bellowed from the choir loft, “Lurlene’s havin’ the baby!”

Sunday services at the Baptist church were, as a rule, predictable. We sang, we prayed, we listened to James speak in calm, reasonable tones about being good Christians, we made our offerings. It was pretty plain vanilla, pretty typical, pretty foundational – a part of village life that didn’t inspire or offend anyone. We put on our Sunday clothes and Sunday faces and did our best not to fidget or fall asleep. Until the morning that Lurlene Nickerson birthed her 12^th child in the choir loft, church was uneventful and a touch boring.

“Doc! Doc!” Jacob yelled frantically, “Carry your ass up here now! This baby’s a-comin with or without you!”

That was the moment it all turned into a scene out of the Keystone Kops. There was mayhem in the choir loft, Lurlene was wailing, Doc McDonald and Uncle Shad collided on their way to the scene and the congregation was in an uproar. James was clutching his Bible and calling uselessly for order.

“Good God!” Doc hollered to be heard above the confusion and noise, “Women been havin’ babies since before the damn flood! Jesus wept, Lurlene’s got herself eleven already! Everybody just clear out and settle down! And somebody go fetch her husband!”

The pastor collected his wits and stepping down from the pulpit, led the congregation out. His wife, Lily, took the choir in hand and evacuated the choir loft. Doc made his way through and Lurlene quieted. Uncle Shad hovered helplessly over his daughter-in-law. In a very few minutes as we milled about in front of the church, there was a newborn’s cry. A few minutes after that, Lily appeared on the church steps.

“It’s a boy!” she announced with a wide smile and the entire congregation applauded.

About that time, there was a roar of an engine and a battered pick up truck came barrel assing down the road in a cloud of dust and exhaust. The crowd in front of the church scattered as it careened wildly and pulled in with a screech of brakes, sending a spray of gravel in all directions.

Rodney Nickerson, wild-eyed and looking like an unmade bed in work boots and faded overalls, flung open the truck door and raced for the church, nearly knocking over Lily in his rush to get inside. Nine of his eleven children, including Noah and his prize pig, all packed into the bed of the pick up like sardines, picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and cheered.

Doc pronounced mother and child doing fine and Lily and James arranged for Lurlene to spend the night in the spare bedroom. After that there wasn’t much to be done and with the excitement over, the congregation headed to their homes.

Until that sunny, Sunday morning, there’d never been a baby born in the Baptist Church and there’s never been one born there since. After 12 births, Lurlene was said to have had enough and she discreetly made an appointment with a doctor in Halifax and had her tubes tied over the following Labor Day weekend. The entire village sighed with relief.

Real Worries

 

There’s nothing like worry. Useless, stressful, wearing and bad for the soul.

I worry about everything.

I wonder how long the little blue car will endure, will the a/c unit last another year, will the agency survive, what if I have a catastrophic injury or illness, do I have enough life insurance, will a tree fall on the roof during the next thunderstorm, how am I going to manage without unemployment benefits. I worry that Covid 19 will kill us all, that the president will win in November, that there won’t be a country left to call home. I think about cuts to social security and medicare and families going bankrupt from or without health care. I worry about the forests and the oceans and the air and the wildlife preserves. It’s foolish and wasteful and unhealthy but if it’s out there, I worry about it. Now and again, for brief periods, I find and push the pause button but in the end the off button just doesn’t work.

I’ve practiced one day at a time thinking and staying out of the dark places for a very long time now but there’s always been a ray of hope to hold onto. Now the reality is that if the president wins re-election, it’s a victory for ignorance, racism, misogyny, political corruption, hypocrisy and nepotism. After another four years of self destruction, I’m not persuaded that as a country we will ever be able to find our way back. Some damage can’t be undone.

In an effort to distract myself, I sign onto social media to see what’s happening outside my own self. I scroll past the political crap piles and delete the sad eyed, abused animals but I can’t quite bypass the update about a friend’s child who is in St. Jude’s in Memphis with leukemia and not doing well. I can’t imagine what they’re going through, can’t even begin to comprehend the fear and anxiety and exhaustion they must be feeling. Then I see a new GoFundMe account set up for a modeling agent I know in Dallas. In his fight against a particularly virulent, brutal and disfiguring cancer, they have tried everything without any success. He has a wife and four young children and isn’t expected to see another Christmas.

I send donations to both and remind myself what real worry is.

The Fog

 

On the morning of the day that Uncle Eddie and Aunt Helen were due to arrive, a fogbank rolled in, rapidly swallowing everything in sight. By the time Nana was wrapping up the breakfast dishes, you could extend your arm straight out and not be able to see your hand. It was cold, dense, and sopping wet.

“It’s a bad sign,” my grandmother muttered to my mother.

“It’s only for a week,” my mother pointed out.

“A week with Helen is like a month with a witch,” Nana said grimly, “And if, God forbid, if it don’t clear, we’ll be trapped inside the whole time. I’m ain’t sure I’d survive it.”

To be sure, the prospect of a week under the same roof with my Aunt Helen was dismal. We had already cleaned the house from top to bottom, washed every single dish and linen twice, relined the shelves in the pantry, defrosted the refrigerator, organized the kitchen drawers and dusted anything and everything that didn’t move. Lily Small had instructions about what and when to deliver vegetables, Aunt Pearl and Aunt Vi were baking ftesh bread, Nana had arranged for John Sullivan to bring scallops and haddock. My mother had stopped Bill, The Meat Man, and bought a quarter of his stock of steaks. Every window was newly washed, inside and out, Nana and I had scrubbed and polished every inch of the bathroom from the ceiling to the walls to the floor. Brand new towels hung from gleaming towel racks and every curtain in every room had been washed and pressed. Even so, we were not optimistic – it was relatively certain that Helen would find fault with something. She had, so my mother often said, a perfect gift for criticism and it was always delivered with such an unmistakable air of condescension that it set everyone’s teeth on edge. Even the dogs avoided her but it was here that my grandmother drew her line in the sand and refused to even consider sending them out for the week.

“If she don’t bother them, they won’t bother her,” she announced in a tone that clearly said it was not up for discussion. The very last thing we had done was bathe them both in the kitchen sink that very morning, sprayed them for fleas and washed their bedding. “Bad enough that they smell like lavender,” Nana said with a sigh, “I ain’t gon’ throw them out of their own home for Miss Fancy Britches nohow.”

It was nigh on supper time when Uncle Eddie’s Cadillac convertible inched down the gravel driveway, its headlights glowing faintly and eerily through the fog. At Nana’s direction, the boys had strung twin guide ropes from the backdoor to the garage and back again so there was a narrow makeshift path to follow. It reminded me of the rope bridges from the Saturday morning Tarzan movies except on firm ground. Nana held her breath as her brother and his wife navigated slowly and carefully to the house. I knew she was thinking about the consequences of a slip and fall or just the possibility of a turned ankle. Once they were safely inside, she sent the boys for the luggage and did her best to reassure her sister-in-law that the worst was over.

“Supper’s on the table,” she told them a little anxiously, “Whenever you’re ready. I know the drive must have been dreadful.”

“Harrowing!” Aunt Helen replied imperiously, “I couldn’t possibly even think about eating!”

“Well, I sure as hell can, old girl,” Uncle Eddie said cheerfully, “Helen may be undone but I’m half starved! Do I smell the traditional fish chowder and brown bread?”

“That you do!” my mother assured him with barely a glance at my Aunt Helen, “Ready and waiting!”

“Edgecomb!” Helen intervened sharply, “I insist you help me to my room! I need to rest!”

“Certainly, dear,” Uncle Eddie sighed, “Shall I carry you or do you have the strength to walk?”

Nana covered her face and fled. My mother was right behind her but not before she’d laughed out loud. Helen bust into tears and Uncle Eddie looked heavenward. It set the tone of the week to come nicely. After three days of the fog-induced, close quarters hibernation, the women were barely speaking. On the third night, the sky cleared and turned a dark red.

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” Uncle Eddie predicted as he and my grandmother washed the late supper dishes.

“Praise the Lord,” Nana said hopefully.

We woke the next morning to a bright, clear, sunny day – the ocean seemed bluer, the grass greener and the air sweet and fresh. The foghorn was blessedly silent. Everyone’s spirits had been lifted and breakfast was an almost cheerful affair with Helen having recovered from her trauma of her harrowing, foggy drive and regaining her appetite despite the fact that she was forced to settle for orange juice rather than tomato. When we were done, Uncle Eddie suggested they go for a drive and you could almost hear the relief, it washed over us like a wave.

“Just the thing!” my mother said, “Helen, you get dressed, and we’ll pack you a picnic lunch and you can make a day of it!”

Nana held her breath and I suspected she was desperately praying for her sister-in-law to say yes. Helen looked thoughtful – then briefly suspicious – but in the end she agreed.

“Bring a scarf, old girl,” Uncle Eddie reminded her, “It’s a fine day and you won’t want to get wind blown.”

An hour later, Helen reappeared in her immaculate make up, pumps, pearls and matching sweater skirt ensemble. Her designer handbag hung casually from one elbow and a chiffon scarf was fashionably draped around her neck and shoulders. We all complimented her, as required, and then Uncle Eddie escorted her to the convertible.

“Your carriage awaits, madam,” he told her with an exaggerated bow and a discreet wink to my grandmother. Helen stiffened her already rigid spine and allowed him to take her elbow. She never looked back but I think if she had, we’d have been leveled by her familiar, contemptuous glare. Nobody could do a sneer quite like my Aunt Helen and nobody paid less attention than my Uncle Eddie. For his part, it was – we all agreed – a remarkable achievement.

The day long drive gave us a chance to regroup and recover and the next few days passed without incident. A week to the day they had arrived, the convertible was packed up and we watched it pull up the gravel driveway and disappear.

“That’s that then,” Nana said with a heavy sigh, “Reckon we’re safe until Christmas.”

That summed it up nicely.

Backslider

I wake up feeling hopelessly depressed and discouraged. The feelings are impossible to shake off and it takes every bit of energy and will for me to leave the bed. Even the two small, anxious faces of the dogs don’t motivate me. We are headed toward a country and a world I don’t want to live in and if it weren’t for my animals, I think I’d have checked out already. I know this is toxic thinking, I tell myself it will pass because everything does, but I’m worn out and weary and ready to quit. The thought occurs to me: Damn the consequences, it won’t be my problem. But there are those two small faces and those eyes. Not to mention the four felines that share my life. Even if I was committed and had the courage and was dead serious, the exit is blocked. So I get up, pull on yesterday’s clothes and make up my mind to start again. Waiting on the dogs to finish their breakfast and deliberately turning off the news, I begin to scribble on the back of an envelope things to be grateful for. I’m still above ground, have a roof that doesn’t leak, six healthy and well fed animals, a car that runs, unemployment benefits, a job I will eventually return to, a select few friends, a cupboard full of food, and a few thousand in the bank, just in case. I remind myself that there are people who would kill for a quarter of what I have and while It doesn’t completely eliminate the darkness, it is enough for me to pull myself together for another day.

When you find yourself drowning in negativity, searching for the good becomes a full time occupation. It takes energy and faith and practice. In the words of the Greg Brown song,

I’m a poor backslider,

in a pit of sin.

I try to crawl out,

and fall back in.

Just for today, I tell myself, I’ll hold on and wait to see what’s around the next corner.

Bad Blood

Memorial Day starts with cool air and gray skies. The sun is trying but not having much luck and there’s still a little leftover rain in the trees. It brings back a fuzzy memory of my grandmother and I driving to the cemetery to put flowers on my grandfather’s grave. All I really remember is that it was a long, quiet drive – he was buried in Northborough, a considerable distance from Boston but I never knew why. She is in Cambridge, at Mount Auburn Cemetery, my mother is buried in a small New Hampshire town and my daddy’s grave is in Nova Scotia, near where he was born and raised. It seems even in death, the family is fractured and disconnected.

All families, so it is said, are dysfunctional in their own way. In my house, we were, at best, five people who lived under one roof but had only the barest of interactions. We did not share our lives except in the most superficial and accidental manner. Except for anger, any display of emotion was non-existent. We didn’t touch, didn’t talk, didn’t meet except for meals which were far too often a painfully tense prelude to open warfare. Except for church on Christmas and Easter, we didn’t to anything as a family - no vacations, no picnics, no birthday parties, no weddings or funerals, no shopping excursions, no school projects or movies or family nights. My daddy worked, my mother drank, my brothers kept to themselves and I hid out at the library.

Temporary and always changing alliances formed and reformed but they had no depth and were invariably based on no more than self interest. When I discovered that not all families were like ours, that some genuinely seemed to love and enjoy each other and spend time together, it was a shock. Those families talked to each other, cared about each other, got mad at one another and worked it out. Those families knew each other. They could make one another cry with a particularly well considered Christmas gift. To my mind, it was dreadfully foreign behavior.

The other thing we did exceptionally well was keep up secrets and appearances. We didn’t talk about my ogre of a grandfather’s temper or my mother’s drinking or my daddy’s long term ladyfriend. We never mentioned my mother’s illegitimate half sister (I was in my 20’s before I even learned of her) or my grandfather’s alcoholism or my brother’s pathological side. It felt as if we didn’t care enough to even be dysfunctional. When I look back now, I think we were closer to being a boarding house than a family.

Adulthood and leaving home didn’t improve things. We carried the indifference with us and became acquaintances with nothing in common. Leading separate lives had become ingrained.

When the inevitable split happened and the estrangement became permanent, I had no sense of loss. I still don’t. You can’t grieve for something you never had.

Still, idle curiosity sometimes stirs inside me. I don’t know how, when or where my parents met. I don’t know if they courted, where they were married, who was there. I have no idea how he supported her or if she ever worked. I know they were both in the military because I’ve seen pictures of them in uniforms but I don’t know how they came to be in Springfield, where I was born, or later to Waltham and finally to Arlington. At some point, my daddy went to work for my grandfather and there he stayed but how that came to pass I don’t know either.

In the end, I don’t suppose it matters much. It all wound up in hurt feelings and bad blood and there it stays. All families – so it is said often and rightly, I think – are dysfunctional in their own way. We love our families or we survive them.

Monsters Among Us

Monsters are real,” Stephen King wrote, “and sometimes they win.”

I’m not young enough or naive enough to still believe that good always overcomes evil. I think that the very best we can hope for – but not count on – is that it will mostly even out. And that’s only on days when I can manage to convince myself that hope itself is not one massive illusion. Those days are becoming fewer and farther between.

In some places around the world, the plague has been beaten back or kept at bay but in my own country, it’s winning. We denied it and downplayed it and offered it a firm grasp, not bothering to put up any resistance until it was too late. We provided a handful of masks and a fraction of the testing required and declared we’d won. And only now with the death tolls at staggering levels and the infection rates sky rocketing like a California wildfire, do we realize that we’re losing. Greed and profit matter more than lives. Ignorance combined with arrogance is the most deadly sin and it will be our undoing. No matter how this ends, if it ever does, life is never, ever going to be the same. The resulting economic crash was inevitable as was the mendacity that pushed for the reckless and fatal re-openings of states. Politicians and a selfish, lawless citizenry pushed for re-openings and are now paying the price. I have searched my soul and cannot find a single shred of sympathy for Texas or Florida. Small wonder that the virus has the upper hand – we invited the damn thing in.

Meanwhile, black lives are still being sacrificed in the cause of law and order. An illiterate, incoherent, lying, too stupid to live white supremacist sits in the White House and is protected and shielded by a cadre of bought and paid for congressmen and a cult of supporters too racist and willfully blind to see what’s happening. God and guns and fuck you, I got mine is the rule of the land. We have elected a cruel and delusional fool and chosen a path that can only lead to self destruction.

It’s remarkable how little time and effort it took to get to the “Just let’em die and be done with it” stage.