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.

Fish Food

Ruthie and I had spent more hours than we could count collecting shells and starfish and driftwood, sometimes we would find an old coin tangled in the kelp but until the tide carried in the severed hand, our adventures had been harmless and mostly uneventful. The hand changed everything.

Ruthie saw it first and let out a high pitched scream, scaring me out of a year’s growth and making me drop my entire lapful of sea glass. It was ragged at the wrist, shriveled and badly discolored, missing two fingers and the joint of the thumb. When Ruthie poked it with a stick, I gagged and thought for a moment that I would lose my lunch.

“Leave it alone!” I wailed desperately.

“Jeesum crow,” she whispered, “Somebody’s fish food!” She leaned in a little closer and prodded it again. My stomach lurched dangerously.

“Let’s just go home,” I pleaded with her but Ruthie was as fascinated as she was stubborn. She managed to separate the vile thing from the kelp with the stick and push it out of the way of the tide.

“What can we put it in?” she asked.

“PUT IT IN?” I screeched and realized I was beginning to feel light headed, “”Put it back in the water! Let the fish finish it!” A feeling very much like panic had begun a slow but steady climb from my gut and I was positive if it reached my throat I would puke or pass out or both but Ruthie was being maddening reasonable.

“No,” she said calmly, “We have to tell somebody. Sparrow or Long John maybe.” She looked thoughtful for a moment and then grinned. “Better yet, we’ll take it to Doc! He’ll know what to do.”

The thought of handling it was the last straw. The bile reached my throat and I suddenly tasted acid indigestion and began dry heaving. I ran blindly for the edge of the woods, fell to my knees and threw up breakfast and lunch and everything in between. It was humiliating and awful but Ruthie helped me up, had me rinse my mouth with a handful of salt water, then gave me a cherry lifesaver and a reassuring hug.

“We can wrap it in kelp and put the kelp in the sandwich box,” she said practically, “Don’t worry, you won’t have to touch it.”

So that’s what we did. She tied her bandana to the stick and then the sandwich box to the bandana and we set off. I kept well away from the wretched thing but Ruthie just slung the stick over one shoulder and began to whistle. Headed down the well worn path from the cove to the road, I imagined we looked all the world like a couple of Norman Rockwell kids off on a fishing trip.

We found Doc comfortably settled in a rocking chair on his porch, smoking his pipe, frowning over a crossword puzzle and drinking buttermilk. The old gray tomcat who had kept company with every doctor we’d ever had was asleep at his feet and Miz Flora was in the kitchen, frying sausages and potatoes. Without a flicker of disbelief or condescension, Doc listened gravely as Ruthie explained what the tide had carried in. When she was done, he adjusted his spectacles and nodded for her to open the lunchbox.

“Well,” he said neutrally, “Let’s have a look at it.”

Ruthie opened the box, lifting the lid carefully and exposing the hand in a bed of kelp. I more than halfway expected it would begin crawling out on its own accord and was fully prepared to run when Doc reached for it - thought better of it and called for Miz Flora to bring him a pair of gloves, pulled them on and reached again - and laid it on the concrete. Flora went white and let out a gasp and the cat suddenly woke, wrinkled its nose and ran off in a huff. Smart cat, I thought dismally.

Doc frowned and looked closer. “My, my” he said and there was just a touch of surprise in his voice, “That certainly is a hand. How interesting.” He had Ruthie re-tell about how and where we had found it, asked if we’d seen anything else in the way of body parts (that made my gut clench again and I swallowed fiercely hard and prayed not to throw up) and then had Flora fetch a plastic bag and carefully slid it over the thing. “Reckon we’ll let the law have a look,” he told us reassuringly, “You were right to bring it.”

Ruthie flashed me a smug, told-you-so kind of smile and I had a sudden urge to punch her but I was too glad to be rid of the hand to stay mad. Doc took it to the RCMP but we never did find out whose it was or what had happened. Nova Scotia was a maritime province and the Atlantic storms took many an unsuspecting fisherman. It was painful and heartbreaking but not uncommon for a fishing boat to drift home alone and the body never be recovered.

“Comes with the territory,” Sparrow often said, “The ocean, she keeps her secrets.”

Alligators

There are few things more endearing than a tribe of hollering, dirt smeared urchins in ragged clothes descending on an unsuspecting drugstore while their scrawny, scantily clad, chin to ankle tattooed, meth addled mother tries to make sense of her change to pay for her smokeless tobacco. She swats absent mindedly at the children, cursing under her breath and yelling for them to behave. Most are running wild, pulling items off the shelves and chasing each other through the aisles. The one in the stroller begins to wail. Not a single child or their mother is wearing a mask and one older child is busy trying to rip the social distancing markings off the floor. Distracted drugstore staff are trying to pretend none of it is happening while management has done their well practiced disappearing act. It’s chaos at its best.

“Alligators,” I tell the cashier, making no effort to be discreet, “They eat their young.”

“Sound practice,” she tells me and smiles over her mask.

I pay for my cigarettes and make my escape.

Walgreen's Rules

I should have known better.

They have to call for a supervisor to come to the photo desk and as I watch her shuffle her sullen and obese self toward me, I remind myself not to judge a book by its cover. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t smile, doesn’t show any interest. I take a deep breath.

“Hi!” I say brightly, determined to give her the benefit of the doubt, “I need a print made from a negative.”

“Have to send it out.” she says flatly.

“Ok.” I say and try to smile.

“Might take 3-4 weeks,” she adds with a hostile glare.

“Ok.” I say and try harder.

“Maybe longer,” she says defiantly.

I don’t have to have a house fall on me. I slowly take back the negative and put it away, pick up my keys and sling my purse over my shoulder.

“Tell you what,” I say loudly, “Next time you can’t be bothered to help a customer, try saying so upfront. It’ll save you both time and trouble. Go back to your stall and strap on your feedbag.”

The last was harsh and I shouldn’t have said it but I’m done with slovenly, shiftless, rude and indifferent customer service and the troglodytes who provide it without consequences. The girls who cashier for minimum wage at the front of the store are unfailingly polite and pleasant and helpful. They know me and what brand of cigarettes I smoke, which candy I buy and that I’m likely to forget my keys if I’m frazzled. The rules for management are far less civil. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why this is such a hard lesson to learn.

Time Warped

As if life in the time of plague wasn’t challenging enough, the grocery stores have now instituted one way aisles. In this city, it’s all we can do manage one way downtown streets or 4 way stops and they think we can handle (or will obey) red arrows in floor diagrams. Many of the store’s employees and most of the shoppers are mask-less and seem to be wandering aimlessly. Some are outright lost, hypnotized by the barren shelves where the paper goods used to be. I have the feeling I am trapped in some kind of post-apocalyptic underground film, that the very next turn I take could lead straight into a nest of the undead. The other thing I notice is that it’s almost eerily quiet, no piped in elevator music is playing and the only sounds are the stops and starts of the shopping cart wheels. The shelf stockers move slowly and silently, as if in a daze and the cashiers are pale and glassy eyed, moving woodenly and seeming to look straight through me. The automatic doors whoosh open and a bag boy stumbles in, pushing a line of carts and looking bewildered. He doesn’t navigate the turn well and the first cart crashes into a display of bakery goods, sending containers of brownies and eclairs and freshly baked pies in all directions. It’s enough for me. I hand over a hundred dollar bill for $97 worth of groceries, tell the cashier to keep the change and make a run for it, swerving wildly to avoid the wreckage of the collision at the front doors and escaping to the parking lot. I was fully prepared to run right over anyone who got in my way.

Once outside, I came back to myself, feeling silly and ashamed for letting my imagination have its way. The grocery store was just a grocery store, not a scene from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. The shoppers were just tired and quarantine-fatigued consumers, the employees no more than harried and overworked clerks. The bag boy was likely sleep deprived or over confident or had simply not been paying attention. It was, after all, just past 7 am on a Saturday morning in the 10^th week of this crisis. We all should still have been in bed.

I unloaded the groceries and dutifully returned the once again ordinary shopping cart to its corral. The morning was sun was warm and the pavement beneath my feet was reassuringly solid and substantial. I found myself thinking how odd it is that we don’t appreciate normal until it’s gone – I miss the unremarkable pre-virus days, the ordinary routines, the self indulgent complaining and complacency we allowed ourselves. Any distraction, even one born of a runaway imagination fueled by too much Stephen King and too little Walt Whitman is welcome. I had no idea that just a few days later, there would be widespread looting and riots with cities set on fire and the national guard patrolling the streets. Sometimes even my imagination can’t keep up.