A High School Memory

 

It was, most everybody said, an unusual and highly unlikely friendship.

Dawn was a golden girl, a child of wealth and privilege, gifted with more beauty than brains but with a good heart and an unexpectedly strict sense of fair play. She was more at home on the tennis court than the classroom and she stood her ground fiercely when it came to choosing her high school, refusing the private venues her parents had selected and opting for a public one. What’s more, she wouldn’t even consider using the family’s driver. She would ride the transit bus, same as 99% of her classmates, spring and winter weather notwithstanding. When the school choir needed a soloist, it was always Dawn they turned to, the rest of us were just backup singers. She and I had known each other for years as both our families attended the First Baptist Church and we’d been friends since junior high. Despite her background and upbringing, despite her blonde hair and fair peach skin, despite how easily everything (except a high GPA) came to her, you got used to her genuine smile and easy manner and how she treated everyone as equals. It was impossible not to like her.

June was the daughter of immigrants who lived perilously close to the sleazy side of Cambridge in a triple decker on a poorly lit and neglected side street. She was tall and slim, dark haired and olive skinned with an athletic build and a competitive spirit that made her perfect for the high school basketball team. We’d known each other since elementary school, had done projects together and played on the same Philadelphia Kick Ball and softball teams. In fifth grade, we were the only two girls to pass on the ballroom dancing class in favor of field hockey. Her family, loud and rambunctious and generous, welcomed me with open arms, genuine affection and always full plates of pasta and hot buttered garlic bread. We’d been choir mates since junior high and shared a love of music and cheap romance magazines. In sixth grade, I helped her with English classes, she helped me with math and somehow or other, we both managed to pass Conversational French.

The three of us came together in our first year of high school. We didn’t know it then but June would be Dawn’s first serious competition for the role of primary soloist for the choir. We more or less expected some resentment or jealousy from Dawn but that sense of fairness got in her way and she opted for sharing the spotlight. The choir had one of it’s best seasons in years.

As so often happens, the closeness we had in high school didn’t last after graduation and we lost touch. Rumor had it that Dawn had gone on to finishing school and then to two or three failed marriages and then to a quiet and well funded retirement condo in Daytona Beach. June got a scholarship to Northeastern, played four years of basketball as a star forward, graduated with honors and married a ROTC candidate. Several years later, I heard that she and her husband had renovated the old triple decker and become active in the gentrification movement of her old neighborhood but I never knew about either of them for sure. Sometimes, people, even good friends, come and go in our lives like the weather. You have to appreciate the fair, get through the foul, and be grateful for both. Everybody we come across is a lesson.

Fire & Flood

 

It isn’t going to be the fires and floods and earthquakes but the little things that do me in. Like not being able to remember if I let all of Michael’s dogs back in, changed the kitty litter or the name of an actor from an old (or new) movie. Like how I routinely forget to enter a transaction in my checkbook or can’t come up with a particular word when I’m writing. All I really have to do is leave things (glasses, keys, purse, etc) in the same place each and every time and I would never lose things. I weary of wondering if I locked the door behind me or put that last cigarette out or turned off my headlights. I tell myself it’s absentmindedness (and that I’m entitled) but I don’t always seem to convince myself anymore. I sometimes feel a sense of dread that senility isn’t as far off or traveling as slowly as I’d like.

Just today, I left class to make a quick trip home to let Michael’s and my own dogs out. I hadn’t been back more than 10 minutes when I realized I couldn’t remember letting any of the dogs, mine or his, back in. Michael and I both knew the chances that I actually hadn’t were somewhere between slim and astronomical but it’s not something you can risk so as sure as I was that all the dogs were exactly where they were supposed to be, I made a second trip, just so I was absolutely, unshakably positive. It really should be a little easier to trust your instincts – Michael’s three were calmly sleeping in the front room and my two were in the sun room, napping peacefully on the love seat. Just as I had left them. Just as I knew they would be. It was a silly waste of time, energy, worry and gasoline.

These golden years are tinged with rust and these senior moments are (pun absolutely intended) getting old.

Pioneer Days

 

The Storm of 2021 was no surprise. It was the after effects that did us in.

You’d have had to be six feet underground to have missed the warnings and the forecasts and the dire predictions so on the last day of our suspiciously mild winter, I trudged to the grocery store and stocked up on dog and cat food, kitty litter, diet cokes in glass bottles, Ghiradelli caramel squares and cigarettes. I felt quite secure about the coming storm, naively optimistic that the doomsayers were wrong when the said we could expect 5 -8 inches of snow followed by a full week of well below freezing temperatures. This was, after all, Louisiana and such things were unheard of even in our northwest section of the state. I went to sleep feeling confident at being prepared and slightly foolish for letting worry get the best of me.

Sleet against the windows woke me around 5 am and when I looked out, I was shocked to see the world had turned a pristine and deep white. Everything from the lawns to the street and the trees and the vehicles, including my own, was blanketed in snow and it was still falling. It was amazingly beautiful and serenely still, like a painting. It was also, I dimly realized, deadly.

I dug out a layer of thermal underwear and pulled on sweats and a second pair of socks then woke the dogs.

“Brace yourselves, guys,” I warned them, “This is something you haven’t seen before and you’re going to have to be very brave.”

There was easily over a half foot of snow on the deck and while they each started out willingly enough, all it took was a couple of paws into the icy cold before they retreated and gave me an unbelieving stare, a patented “Are you on drugs?” kind of stare. This, I saw, was not going to be a cakewalk. I put on my leather Nikes, hunted up my knit cap and gloves, and resistance aside, tucked one dog under each arm, carried them outside and set them down in the snow and sleet. Being small dogs, they were both immediately half buried but they managed to do their business and then tunnel their way back inside, coats glistening with ice and shivering from muzzle to tail.

“What good, good dogs I have!” I told them and gave them double biscuits before setting about to feed them and the cats.

I checked the thermostat and was relieved to see it holding at 72, a result no doubt of having replaced all the plastic duct work with metal a few months before. At the time, I thought the cost had been obscene but now I found myself grateful even if I didn’t live long enough to pay it off. I still had water at that point, the prior day’s grocery run had been a true blessing, the cable was still on. Things looked rough but not bleak. I had no idea of how wrong I was.

Day Two dawned cold, bright, icy and well below freezing. The forecast was for “A wintry mix of precipitation” which translated to more snow, sleet, freezing rain and the possibility of an ice storm. I decided to give the weather folks the benefit of the doubt and scrounged old towels and plastic trash bags and duct tape to wrap the outside faucets and set all the inside ones to dripping. I was anxious about the pipes freezing or losing power but not panicked. I did my best to concentrate on what was happening and tried to keep what might happen at bay.

Things escalated on Days Three and Four. A second storm brought several more inches of snow plus more sleet and freezing rain. Ice formed underneath and on top of what was already there and it took everything the poor dogs had to stay upright when they went outside. Reports of power outages became common and widespread, the shelters filled to overflowing, water mains froze and cracked all over the city, and every other story on social media seemed to be about animals left outside to die. A Days Inn across the river caught fire and burned to the ground and a homeless man froze to death on a downtown street. Water pressure evaporated in one neighborhood after another and by the third day, thousands were without any water at all and thousands more were without power. And still the arctic cold and snow continued, downing tree limbs onto roof tops, collapsing carports, freezing roads and trees and anything in its path.

The interstate closed with mile after mile after mile of 18 wheelers jackknifed or frozen in place.

Travel was out of the question, not that there was anywhere to go.

By Day Five, the hospitals were without water and in crisis. Medical personnel couldn’t get to work and those who were there already couldn’t get home. Tow trucks couldn’t get to stranded motorists and the National Guard was called in to deliver water and medical supplies and staff newly opened shelters. There was not a hotel or motel room to be had for 20 miles. Private citizens were on the streets, clearing wrecks and accidents and checking on neighbors.

By Day Six, a Thursday, there was speculation about a potential warm up for the weekend and people began shoveling out as best they could. One chain grocery store managed to open with reduced hours and rationing and was immediately cleaned out of everything from drain opener to canned vegetables and anything in between. Though fragile and painfully uncertain, there was at least the hope of a thaw. Looking like a refugee Eskimo, my neighbor, Kevin, appeared to break up the ice on my steps and make sure my car would start. Still without water, we began collecting snow to melt – we boiled it for drinking and then collected more so toilets could be flushed and dishes could be washed. We filled buckets and bath tubs and sinks and ice chests and said prayers of thanks for gas stoves and heaters.

“Snow coffee is really awful!” my friend Michael texted me, on Day 7, “When is this nightmare going to end?”

The thaw began on Day 8. It slowly warmed up to almost 45 and being out of dog food, I had to chance driving. I stayed on the main streets, avoiding any road that hadn’t gotten sunshine and inching my way through intersections of slush and black ice, driving only in the ruts and never more than 20 mph.

“S’posed to be almost 60 tomorrow,” Kevin told me when I got home, “You got everything you need?”

Everything ends, of course, and a week or so later, the storm was mostly a memory. Spring, complete with flowers and 80 degree temperatures arrived, making us all feel as if we were waking from a bad dream. Sadly, not everything survived and in many places what should have been green and growing was dirty brown, bare, and leafless. AT&T’s underground cable system was severely damaged and entire neighborhoods were without telephone and internet for the next month. Repairs to the battered water infrastructure took less time but busted pipes sprung up like a measles epidemic and the city’s water department was kept on overtime for weeks. All in all, we took to telling each other, it could’ve been far worse. We really would have made pitiful pioneers.

Soap & Shoe Leather

 

Convinced the cur dog has stolen his jerky treat, the little pit mix turns on him in a fury of snarling and snapping jaws and frantic barking. He fights back with equal ferocity, sinking his teeth into the little one’s neck and trying to shake him off. Before I can get them separated, the female pit joins the fray, not caring who she can try to tear apart as long as she’s part of the confrontation. I amaze myself with my own coordination – several swift kicks to the cur dog, one hand grabbing at the little pit, and the other hauling off the female with a nearly malicious twist of her collar. I get resentful looks from all three but I’ve intervened in time and there’s no bloodletting so I beat them all within an inch of their lives, sort of, and then lock each into a solitary time out.

“Miserable goddam dogs!” I holler at them and slam the door behind me, “Got the manners of savages!”

I spend a relatively quiet forty-five minutes at my desk and then reluctantly release them. They are wide eyed with innocence and the unfairness of it all.

“For two cents and a bus token,” I tell them sternly, “I’d have ya’ll turned into soap and shoe leather and get a cat.”

It’s an empty threat and they know it. They trail after me, barely chastized, nipping at each others heels, pushing and shoving to be first out the door. One alpha dog is a challenge, Two are a nightmare. Three are bedlam. They descend the steps like a 3 car pile up, regain their footing, and make a mad dash for the back fence where one of the neighborhood ferals is watching calmly and being singularly unimpressed by this display of ferocity. The barking is frenzied and hysterical but the cat is unmoved, unequivocally staring them down with the kind of defiance seen only in stray cats and right wing republicans. When she’s ready, she walks away, tail held high, stepping lightly and in no hurry. The exhausted dogs watch in desperate despair as their prey casually wanders off.

If cats could join social media, I suspect they’d scroll right past offensive posts. Dogs would engage at every opportunity. Cats know you don’t have to dance just because some damn fool asks you.

The Burden of Children

 

The first time the boys came racing through the dining room, nobody paid much attention. My mother halfheartedly told them to slow down.

The second time, she hollered at them but they ignored her.

The third time, Miz Hilda calmly stretched out her walking stick just as they barrel assed around her chair and sent them both flying. Although unhurt, both immediately burst into tears and began to wail like a pair of banshees.

“Hilda!” my mother protested but at the other end of the table, I could see my grandmother fiercely trying to smother a laugh.

“Children,” Miz Hilda said grimly, “particularly boys, are assuredly overrated. Get up, you young hooligans, and stop that hideous noise!”

“Hilda!” my mother repeated weakly but it was no good and she knew it. The former British nanny glared her into submission and she folded and staged a tearful retreat. Abandoned, the boys got to their feet and stood sullenly.

“You did that on purpose,” one of them muttered.

“I most certainly did and I can’t imagine any children more deserving,” Miz Hilda snapped impatiently, “This is a dining room not some barn on the prairie for mannerless, ill brought up street urchins! Take your rude, vulgar games outside this instant or mark my words, I’ll beat you both within an inch of your lives!”

They fled.

“I do apologize if I’ve overstepped, Alice,” Miz Hilda told my grandmother with a sigh, “But not being able to hear oneself think is simply not something to which I intend to become accustomed, however briefly. More tea, dear?”

Nana, now making no attempt to hide a smile, shook her head.

“If I’d had my cane, I might’ve tripped the little bastards myself,” she said mildly, “No harm done.”

Looking back, I have no doubt she meant every word. The boys were her grandsons and while she may have loved them, I knew she didn’t much like them. I think she saw too much of my grandfather in them – crude, coarse and common, as she’d once said when she thought no one was listening. When I was a little older, I began to realize that for my mother and possibly my grandmother as well, children were a by product of marriage, a requirement to be filled, almost a necessary evil. You married and you had children because that was the traditional thing to do. Wanting them was for other families.  

One Less Good Dog

 

He was old, overweight, clumsy, perpetually underfoot and a little dim.

He was also sweet-natured, patient, affectionate and (unless you were a cat) very mellow.

We are going to miss him terribly.

I found him on a chilly Sunday morning, lying on the rug in Michael's office, just exactly the way I'd found him asleep too many times to count. Only this time he didn't rouse, didn't sigh and stretch and slowly get to his feet.

He was, I realized in that fraction of a second before I reached down to shake him awake, dead. It appeared to have been peaceful and just before I began to cry, I had a moment of gratitude. I've lost count of the number of times I've prayed to God to take a sick little one in his or her sleep. This time, although the death was sudden and completely unexpected, God had apparently been watching, maybe even waiting.

I covered him with a blanket and sat down to think of what to do next. I couldn't quite bear the thought of calling Michael to let him know and besides it was barely 7 in the morning – there was no chance of getting Michael so early – but I also couldn't keep a dead dog laid out on the floor. Moving 70 pounds of pit bull was clearly not something I could do alone and even if I managed to get him outside, then what?

When Sweetie died, we called Nathaniel, the young man who tends the yard, and he came and dug the grave. I made the call and then called Michael.

I’m not one who favors big dogs but this one - so gentle and with such huge, soulful eyes - had always had special place in my heart. He was hard of hearing and his vision was bad, he often stumbled going up and down the steps, he had no sense of personal space and no idea of his size and weight. One swing of his head was enough to knock me off my feet and he terrorized passersby and mail carriers by his appearance alone but he loved people and was really not much more than a massive lapdog. Watching Nathaniel dig the grave was profoundly sad.

Rest in peace, old man. You were a fine dog and our lives won’t be the same without you.

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.