Dark Night of the Soul

Dickens began one of his most well-known writings, A Tale of Two Cities, with this unapologetic statement:

“It was the best of times, It was the worst of times…”

It sounds so insightful and bold. Even without reading further, your mind paints pictures of what that means in a removed sort of way:

“It was the best of times” paints a scene maybe from The Great Gatsby with a mansion lit for an evening party. 1920’s limousines driven by dapper gentlemen or even perhaps chauffeurs pull up to the curb and lovely young women emerge in shimmering dresses and stylish hats, perhaps with a trinket garnish and single feather. There is champagne, laughter, trivial talk, even gaiety.

“It was the worst of times.” I see a red kettle poised on a tripod stand near the door of a storefront shop in a nameless city. The hollow clank of a nickel as it hits the base of the kettle hurts my stomach. It doesn’t even give the courtesy of spinning and reverberating its own pitiful sound for a moment. Just, “clank.” One, and done.

As humans, we might be willing to negotiate for some tolerable piece of middle-ground between “best” and “worst.” But that was not offered to us; we don’t get to make that call. In fact, what we do get is only (and this is not small) the choice of our own perspective. We can choose to try to spend our lives between soaring or being knocked down or just staying knocked down because, this side of Eternity, gravity always wins.

I picture the scene in City Slickers, the comedy-western movie where three men riding on horseback herding cattle are preparing to have real conversation (which apparently can only happen in the wilderness or near a campfire). The question is posed: “What was your best day and what was your worst day?” The man answers: “Same day.” You feel cheated by his answer, expecting two stories to emerge when in fact, there is just one story – one story with both a dark side and a light side.

On days when all seems bleak, and there is virtually no wind in your proverbial sails, the thought “How can I go on like this?” ambles across your mind. What you do not see, what you lose sight of, is that as you plow through and tough it out, you are being watched, observed by others. You are giving someone else courage, the inspiration to hang in there and make their next good move towards meaning and significance.

I am pretty sure the great Catholic mystics were referencing THIS experience when they named it: “the dark night of the soul.” It is a transition period -and we don’t know how long – that, while difficult, can be incredibly fruitful. But, if you try to read about it in St. John of the Cross’ writings you get kind of circled around by the literary repetition that the whole concept is hard to grasp. (His great work was written as a poem in Spanish, and when it translated to English, it became cumbersome to interpret, at best.) At the outset we can say this experience is not clinical depression. It is something Other. It almost escapes words. It is like waiting for the last train at the Station, knowing it will come, but the waiting can be so wearisome. In his song “Hold On,” contemporary singer Toby Mac assures:

“He’s never early, never late. He’s gonna stand by what He said. Help is on the way.”

The hope that this statement is true is what you cling to through this transition. And if you can remember it is a transition, because all of life is transition, and/or transitory, you can keep a bit of perspective through the rest of the uncertainty.

My current transition period feels more manageable because people keep talking me through it. They are talking. I am talking. They are listening. I am listening. Yes, sometimes people do admittedly say things that are unhelpful or throw me backwards emotionally. But that is an occupational hazard of humans trying to know exactly what to say when there really seems to be nothing obviously helpful to say. I admit that it is in the talking, the connectedness, that I find comfort. Sadly, sometimes I watch television just to see complete human dialogue happening. This pastime links me emotionally with most people in nursing homes … twenty years earlier than I would prefer it to, and it makes me sad.

I could at this point itemize the hardships and challenges that brought me to this juncture – two job changes within six months, a friend moving away, loss of a relative, loss of a dear friend, and betrayal by someone I care about. But for obvious reasons, I need to defer from specifics. So, I will point you in another better direction for understanding how the dark night of the soul works and is different than depression.

She is the ultimate example of “what you see is only part of what you get”: Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She stood only four feet tall but radiated a focused purposefulness seasoned with genuine human warmth. She knew what it was like to be on one vocational path and have her plan de-railed by the Divine Plan as she sat on a train and heard the interior Voice she so loved telling her to serve the Poor. She left a teaching order of sisters to form a new outreach to the unfortunate ones on the streets of Calcutta. She was doubted by some in church leadership. She was hassled by some government officials. She probably had days when everything felt like pushing a large rock up hill in a snow storm. The strong calling she felt when she began her mission remained, even though the Voice that spoke to her initially became more of an almost-whisper. She continued to pray through this dark feeling of almost abandonment. She hung in there. She was faithful. She was fruitful. She was bold.

My favorite Mother T quote of all times was at a breakfast with the presiding Clintons and Washington Politicians. She got up and said, directly into the microphone: “It is a poverty that a child should die so that you can live as you wish.” And therein the message on the Sanctity of Human Life was most directly delivered by the one person no one could say anything bad about. (Although atheist Christopher Hitchens’ later pitiful attempt to detract from her reputation was only demolished by the powerful truth of who she was: a humble servant, doing the business of serving and reminding others to do the same.) No Pope, no bishop, no leader, no statesman could have said it better or more clearly. Her words, in a broken warbly little senior citizen voice, resounded because of who she was.

Amidst her work with the poor in Calcutta, starting a religious order, and doing international speaking engagements to wake the rest of the world up to suffering they could actually do something about, she was going through her own deep, personal suffering. It is the suffering of one who waits, but only hears silence. The world saw one thing on the surface: her extreme charity. The other thing below the surface was this silent suffering, this feeling of almost-abandonment by Divine Providence. Did she have a moment before she left the earth when this experience lightened, or lifted from her? I do not know. But I know as she passed into Eternity she must have heard the words her soul craved, “Well done! My good and faithful servant!” The quantity of people that passed by her casket to pay final respects was innumerable. Probably only the other saint of our generation, John Paul the Second, drew such a crowd in my lifetime.

It is highly unlikely that I will ever become that kind of saint. But I can be the very best version of ME and continue to walk the way as I understand it. One moment of perfection may never be granted to me. A successful ministry may not come from my efforts. I may be denied opportunities given to other people that I would have preferred for myself. The people I love may not love me back with the same zeal. And, I may be the victim of vicious, lying tongues. But if I stay faithful, stay focused, and hang in there, good will come. And for every suffering I have had to endure, I hear the voice of my dear, saintly Aunt Nellie, “Chrissie, love, this too shall pass. This too shall pass.”

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A Time for Ghosts

 

"Do you think our loved ones hear us, do they know...?" the grieving widow asked Patrick Jayne on the TV series The Mentalist.  He, a widower himself, shook his head sadly from side to side and said "No." And she went away sad.

No one should go away sad.  And it disenchants me that they paint Patrick Jayne as so handsome, so witty, and yet so cynical and un-spiritual.  Because he was a former fraud doing seances for money and allegedly reading peoples' minds, when he uses his unique insight and keen powers of observation to help the CBI team solve cases, they portray him as an atheist since he has left all that "spiritual stuff" behind.  It's throwing the baby out with the bath water.  I hate it when handsome men are atheists.  It's like being given an ice cream cone with sherbet, not ice cream, in it:  sweet, but not filling at all.  

He did get one thing right when he said "all people are spiritual beings."  It bugs me when people say "I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Actually every single human being is spiritual.  We in-spire (breathe-in) and we ex-pire (breathe out).  The Greek word pneuma means:  wind, breath, spirit.  From this word we get "pneumonia" and "pneumatic."  When we run and grow weary, we say, "I am just a bit winded."  When we stop breathing, when we let our spirit leave our body, the very essence of who we are lives on... somehow, somewhere.  

The Somehow and Somewhere is defined by the various religious systems based on the teachings of their religious leaders.  You and I may disagree on who is right.  But in the long run, I think we might all agree that we entrust ourselves individually and corporately to the Mercy of God.  And it's kind of intriguing when you think about it that we believe how we live as people - good or evil - has a role in where we end up, but we never really think of ourselves as bad enough to not end up in a good place.  (The margin of erroneous thinking here is the mistaken people who have a mental image of hell being "fun" and say they want to go there.  Hell's preview on earth is the disorder and disruption of the flow of goodness here on earth - just listen to the morning news and feel how tiring it is to hear of yet another shooting/ stabbing/etc.  What sane person would want that for eternity?!)   

October is the time of year people turn their attention to the passing of friends and relatives.  Maybe it is because here on the East Coast the trees shed their leaves in preparation for the long, cold winter.  There is a bitter-sweetness to this transition, and yet what I've begun to do to cope (I hate winter.) is to think forward to the joys of next spring.  I plant bulbs and hope the squirrels won't ferret them out.  I make a note of what outside summer equipment needs to be repaired, replaced or re-purposed.  I conjure up craft projects to keep me busy.  I think of the ocean vacation I left behind two months ago and anticipate the next time I will put my chair in the sand and my fancy sunglasses on my face.  I think of the litters of puppies to come in the Spring.  In short, I try to put myself in the mindset of Maria vonTrapp in The Sound of Music when she sings the classic, "These are a few of my Favorite Things."  It is a decisive mental exercise so that I don't get sucked into the winter's clutch and stay there:  The tricky driving.  The earlier mornings.  The snow blower battery that doesn't make it through the whole job.  The cabin fever with 3 dogs, 2 cats and 4 million dust bunnies.  The way one room in my house never quite gets warm like the rest of the house.  The way the wind howls when I am trying to sleep and not worry if the power is going out.  Those are all my reasons for hating winter, and hate it, I do.  Autumn is the natural transition into winter, just as Spring is the natural transition out of winter.  If the life of the people we love mirrors the going into winter, I trust the mercy of God that there is a Spring time, a coming out of winter as well.  But what about winter?

 What started out as an opportunity to honor the memory of those who have gone before us got pirated. The first historical Christian Church (the Catholic Church) celebrates All Saints Day, followed by All Souls Day.  Honoring the holy ones and the ones not as super-holy but still loved by God for slugging it out down here on a daily basis, is good for us.  It turns our attention to the End of the Earthly game and towards the spiritual continuance.  What we do here matters.  Who we are here matters.  What we believe here matters - for out of that believing flows our deeds, how we live here.  Yet, somehow the Halloween tradition started and the attention shifted in a worldly way to ghosts, goblins, and things that go "bump" (slash, rip, tear, etc.) in the night.  What a horrible shift.  

When we feel the presence of spirits that are not at rest, instead of praying for them to be at peace, as we should do, knuckleheads make party games out of it and keep trying to bring them back.  Sometimes when you are trying to bring back Aunt Mildred, you end up getting an imposter demon instead - but I will leave the study of demonology for someone else to tell you about.  Why is it we turn everything that is sacred and important that we don't really understand into a game?  Perhaps we trivialize things to feed our curiosity.  I don't know.  But I want to propose this:  maybe sometimes the things we call ghosts, the memories we have, we create to fill the empty spaces that real people left behind.  A lot of humans are not really good at dealing with emptiness.

I drive by the apartment where my friend Mike lived before he moved south to be of help for his sister during her time of need.  Every time I look at that building I think about him inside his apartment.  Someone else surely lives there by now, but not in my mind.  

I can't drive through the neighborhoods in Dewitt where my close friends used to live.  One of them has passed away and I am missing her a lot lately.  Another couple has moved south to Florida and all I can remember is the happy times having picnics on their back porch, or watching Mother Angelica on tv and eating ice cream together on a hot summer's evening.  It's as if that house has echoes of them and our happiness all through it.  No one else's car belongs in that driveway.... the driveway of the friend who threw me a surprise party when I left a job I loved because I needed a new direction.  I think of the double-wide home my other friend used to live in.  No one else's car belongs in her driveway either.  Or does it?

When my dear uncle passed on, he left a vacant house literally right next to my parents' home. During its empty days, it was hard to drive by it and not feel the hollowness. One member of the family, feeling all of the angst I reference in the previous paragraph, said, "I wish it would just burn to the ground.  I have so many happy memories there."  She was serious.  She couldn't see anyone else being there, because that was where he belonged.... at that time.  I encouraged her to spin it this way:  "Just hope for some young couple to come and buy that house and raise their family in happiness there.  That way the happy just keeps going on...."  When my grandparents' house was for sale on the market, the good people that put in a purchase offer sent a letter to my parents saying how they wanted to make that house a happy place once more, something to that effect.  It was so warm, so kind to have someone intent on honoring the memory of those who had gone before.  

The empty houses are places where our minds place ghosts.  (not that there aren't the Other kind of ghosts, again, story for another day).  I am at the point in life - which I am not liking too much - where everything reminds me of something or someone that used to be alive.  The ghosts are everywhere.  So seeing them on the neighbor's lawn down the street as a decoration is kind of just an annoying cartoon to me.  I am hoping for happier days and new memories.  I am longing for springtime, Easter eggs and bunnies and the hope of rebirth.  I am so "done" with ghosts and winter, even though it is not here yet.  But I do know this, sometimes I am guided by a thought, or an unseen hand.  Sometimes the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart are heard.  It is then that I know that Patrick Jaynes was handsome, but wrong, Yes, they CAN hear us.  They want to.  They are the home team just waiting for us to finish running our bases.  And as for me, I will run so as to win the race.

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An Ode to Cable Ties

   An Ode to Cable Ties 

(aka: zip ties)

You held my work together when I need it the most:

You secured ugly orange snow fence

to those holey metal posts.

You wrapped around electric posts

when wiring wouldn't do.

How did I make it this long

without the wonders you pull through?

You hold pieces of my world

from the kennels to the cages,

just like you help the farmers

down throughout the ages.

My mailbox flap kept falling, 

you shored it up so I can get my mail

while hanging proudly on the thing

like a bright green tail.

When I discovered Rust-o-leum, I wanted every hue,

but that was before I discovered

the wonder that is you!  

                                              

The Purpose of Re-purposing

 

The ring-tailed lemur with bulging eyes had this caption below his picture on my refrigerator:  "Did someone say, 'yard sale?'"  I smile every time I look at it.  He is kin to me in that matter.

The new word to describe down-sizing one's possessions is "editing."  I don't understand why someone would want to do that.  In fact, I don't understand how someone could do that.  But, I am not a hoarder.  I am a re-purposer.  My entire adult life I have lived on a relatively snug budget so I really do think before I throw something out.  

Case in point:  It is the dead of winter and every time I drive into my garage I have to look at the pots of dirt I am holding for springtime.  Why? This is why: because I'm too cheap to throw the dirt out, hose out the pots, neatly stack them in one corner of the garage and buy new potting soil in April... which, by the way, is what I will end up doing anyways because the dirt gets stale when it winters-over.  So for now I have a long planter of dirt stashed under the gas grill and two tucked under the extra table in the front of the garage.  I have about four or five pots with partially dead thingamajigs in them that may or may not perk back up in a few months.  I  have three empty hanging pots hooked to the side of the garage shelf taking up space too.  Heaven forbid I recycle them and start anew in the spring.  All this by way of saying, I am not an amateur, I am The Quintessential Saver & Re-purposer.

I had to explain to my almost elderly mother the other day that I am not a hoarder.  My mother and my younger sister live like Benedictine monks in exile:  sparse possessions.  I cannot relate to that.  I am emotionally touched by cute figurines at flea markets and bins of tools at antique stores are very interesting to some corner of my brain.  I don't dismiss things; I think to myself:  is there anything I could use this whooziewhatzit for, because it is only two dollars?  

I also "ransom" religious artifacts from antique barns.  I went through a summer where I was re-painting indoor & outdoor Saints & Blessed Mother statues for people.  I picked up a very, shall we say, "homely" 8-inch plaster duo of St. Anne and young Blessed Mary in the back room of an old antique house in Booneville.  I repainted them and gave them to a friend.  I didn't want to keep them for myself because I have ambivalent feelings about St. Anne ... in college another nice Catholic girl told me that the prayer was, "Good St. Anne, please find me a man."  Either the prayer was too short, or she thought I would take just any specimen of XY that she sent along ... no match on either count.  

That same summer, one of my buddies gave me, rather gingerly, a small desktop grotto statue of the Blessed Mother and asked me if I was able to refinish it.  He pointed out that it was a gift from a family member, and was I certain that I could do it?  I smiled in my heart.  Did he think I would paint her with a purple robe and green hair?  I washed that statue carefully and sat it on my kitchen table.  Then I let it "speak" to me.  I started with the painting each and every grotto stone a lighter shade of grey than previously.  As I was doing it, mentally taking one step at a time, I found that the prior painter had actually used a dark dungeon-grey color and painted not only the rocks but right over tiny rosettes and vines as well.  I was able to bring those rosettes to the foreground with their appropriate happy shades of pinkish-white.  

When I got to the base of the statue, I painted her feet and added just a tasteful, slight peach hue to her toes.  Then I painted the snake she was standing on.  Again, the prior artist had just washed grey right over that.  She had also been standing on a nondescript globe.  It wasn't just an artistic detail - it was an important theological point that had previously been smeared-over with the all-purpose dungeon-grey. When I painted her hands and face, I asked the important question:  How should a Middle Eastern Jewish woman look?  I finished the whole ensemble and let it sit on my table for days so I could ponder it and finalize any details.  I took out my small bottle of magic finish that adds a slight sparkly sheen to anything it touches, and added that to her gown.  After all, if the Blessed Mother appeared to me in my living room, that is what I expect she would be doing:  shimmering with holiness.  And yes, my friend seemed quite pleased with the result.

So, I am not just collecting religious artifacts or odds & ends at yard sales.  I am expanding my own hobby talents (ie. painting).  Painting is actually a form of spiritual contemplation - I find it very grounding.  But I digress.  The original point was that this concept of "editing" one's possessions is not for me.  I gave away two blankets, a pair of pants, and a lavender colored handbag this past weekend to the local Thrift Store.  I can do that because I feel as if I am sharing my collection with someone out there who needs it more.  But I will admit this:  if I come to an untimely demise, someone who comes to clean out my house is going to name my blanket collection: The Chris A. Memorial Blanket Collection.

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Meet Amelia Bedelia

 Hi, this is Chris (also known as "Bik"). This summer Amelia's mother ("Carmen San Diego") was left behind by her people when she needed them the most ... and she birthed 4 kittens in the nearby woods. A very nice neighbor has been feeding these kittens all summer and looking after them. As you may know, the shelters are FULL to the brim of cats & kittens ('tis the season!).

 Finally, a nearby shelter took Carmen San Diego in ... because she was expecting ANOTHER litter! However, they would not take the kittens. One went to live at a nearby farm. Two are on the loose. And one, well, let's just say Valor, Madeline, Sophia, and Gracie have a new friend at their house! 

Giving a kitten a place to live is fun; the vet bills are NOT. She was taken immediately for first shots & general check-up. ($145) She is healthy but needs two more booster/vaccination visits ... and the spaying surgery. Not everyone has the patience to deal with pets.

 But sometimes, those of us who do could use a little help offsetting this enterprise. Also, we would like to give a stipend to the very kind neighbor who fed them all summer and yet was required to also provide a monetary "donation" when she dropped Mama Carmen San Diego and unborn litter off at the shelter. 

We thank you for your support. Amelia Bedelia is healthy and has the cutest pink nose ever! She knows how to use her litter pan, but then she sits in it because she is used to sitting outside. Amelia and her family say: "Thank you for giving us a home! We were so scared the coy dogs would eat us!

We are on GO FUND ME as "Amelia Bedelia & Family"

Seeing Dead People

 "I see dead people."  That was a great line from a movie.  It's useful in so many ways.  And it is ironic that a culture that often seems to want nothing to do with the Almighty and His ways, really, really wants to talk to dead people ... some sort of assurance that this earthly life isn't all there is.  But they don't want eternity on His terms, so it is easier to write Him out of His-story and say things like, "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual."  To this latter phrase I usually respond along the lines of:  "This is not news.  All people are 'spiritual' beings.  Whether or not we acknowledge it is the other thing."

But I want to talk about something else for a minute if you permit me.  "I see dead people."  Actually, I've seen a lot of them - too many - lately.  One of my closest friends passed away last week and when I looked at her lying in her casket I thought two things:  First, she would've hated that color of lipstick.  Second, that what I was seeing was really just the shell she left behind.  And her shell had been worn-down by an unnamed neurological disease for the last decade at least.  It took away her ability to walk without tripping due to not feeling her feet.  It took away her ability to sew, which she loved, because she couldn't feel her fingertips anymore.  It gave me pause to think.  What are the abilities I have now that I just take for granted?  If I lose my feeling in my fingertips, my hobby as a writer is done-for, my ability to play guitar is done-for, and my ability to sew is also done-for, although some would question if I had that talent anyway.  Well, since we are here I will tell you that story.

I have a pair of pajama bottoms I had grown unreasonably fond of and so I thought, "What's to stop me from just sewing my own pair using these as a pattern?"  So I went out and bought literally three dollars worth of jersey cotton, blue tie-dye patterned cloth at Walmart and went home to sew.  I turned the old pajamas inside out and laid them on the table to use as a template.  I laid the new fabric on them and then just measured out one inch on each side so I could roll the seam in nicely.  Then I proceeded to take my Brother-at-my-Side sewing machine and sew them puppies up.  Except when I tried to step into them I  had some problem.  There was not enough top for some reason.  So then I sewed a band of material around the top.  And tried again, and couldn't get into them.  My other friend, who is pretty much also an expert seamstress, took a look at what I made and asked me some questions.  Not the kind of questions you like.  Things like:  "What the hell were you trying to do here?"  and "Why do you have a 'fly' on these - on the front AND on the back?" (I couldn't bring myself to cut the extra fabric so I just folded it over and sewed it.)  It took her longer to fix the problem than it did for me to sew it the first time, albeit incorrectly.  My friend that had just passed seemed to love that story a bit too much, so for Christmas she gave me an official pattern for pajamas and some material.  Both are still in the bag.  I'm kind of scarred for life at this point.

I went to another funeral the week before.  (yeah, we are back on that topic.)  And I was sitting in church at the funeral Mass for a man I met once but did not really know.  I am friends with his daughter and her young adult children, who now are grown up and have husbands and families of their own.  The grandchildren were polite and in fact delightful.  And as I was sitting there in church listening to the homily and the beautiful music of guitar and piano (just like I want for my funeral) it struck me, "So this is where It all ends up.  We all end up spending our whole life pretending that it isn't going to come to this point."  I'm good with the idea of spending eternity with God, it's just jumping the ravine from here to there that makes me nervous.  

"I see dead people" is part of my Polish culture.  It has happened to so many people I know that I fully expect to see someone before I pass away.  For example, with my grandmother, she woke up in the middle of the night and poked my grandfather and said, "Staszek, my mother is here.  She is standing at the edge of the bed."  He did not see his mother-in-law there so that was that, back to sleep.  I think it was a few nights later that my grandmother got up to get a glass of water in the middle of the night and collapsed in the hallway.  I have also heard-tell of stories where just before a person passes away, he or she smiles as if seeing someone familiar.  It's Polish, and we stick together, that much I can tell you.  I

will see dead people. In fact I have asked God for who I want to see that would make me most comfortable in the transition.  Yes, of course, Jesus, but I also have relatives that I would like to see.  

Is that veil between Here and There as hard and fast as we think?  Maybe not.  The Irish have a concept they call "thin spaces."  That is where the veil between Earth and Eternity is less like a drapery curtain and more like a sheer.... we feel our people with us, and there is a sense of peace - or maybe a soul has come to ask for prayer so they can complete their journey.  Perhaps they are stuck in Eternal Third Base and need our prayers to "bat them home."  The day I found out my friend Denise passed, I was driving on the road to my house and just felt "her" in my car.  It was quiet - no radio, no nothing, I just felt her there as if spending one more minute with me before she went further Onward.  If you are American, some of this may be hard for your modern sensibilities.  But if you are Native American these ideas will feel like a favorite Saturday sweatshirt in autumn to you.  The Slavic European cultures also have a much more natural acceptance of this because culture and faith are woven together almost inextricably.  Well, except for those from Communist countries, which explains why they can blow people up and not care.  I would like to admonish them: "Just because you think there isn't a hell, doesn't mean you are right and doesn't mean you won't end up there."  

At the last wake I was at, there was a montage of photos of friends & family.  It was lovely.  Then I noticed the 2007 photo of me and four friends on vacation at the beach.  Of the five people in the photo, three of them are now deceased and of the two of us remaining, one uses a walker and it aint me.  For a moment it felt uncomfortable knowing that since many of my closest friends are mostly older than me by a decade, in the natural order of things, I am going to be burying most of them.  That is the price of friendship.  When it ends that way, it stinks to be the last one standing.  I know a lot of people that won't get a second dog once they go through the soul-wrenching agony of losing one.  As for me, that is why I have more than one at once, and overlap their ages.  I will have a furry friend remaining to get my mind of how brutal death seems at the time.

But because of pets dying, most specifically dogs, I  know the exact time I will die.  Well, generally speaking anyway.  Even people who are not particularly religious are fond of St. Francis of Assisi who was so kind to animals that he even tamed a wolf.  It seems reasonable to presume that the Good Lord will put Francis in charge of the pets that go to heaven.  And it is also reasonable that at some point St. Francis, who may be a saint but also will have his patience wear thin when he says, "Lord, it's TIME for you to call HER up here.  She keeps sending her dogs up first and I've got my hands more than quite full.  I need some help."  That being the case, bury me with a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese because Serena has been waiting mighty long for another bowl of that stuff.  St. Therese of Lisieux may spend her heaven dropping roses as "signs" to those on earth.   I will spend my heaven playing ball with dogs.  

In my mind I still see my friend lying in state in her coffin.  And it bugs me how unnatural that is because she would prefer dragging me out to Denny's for a meal and going to the Christmas Tree Shop to wander around aimlessly.  I think about seeing her dear husband at that same funeral home only a year or two ago.  I think about her now in heaven wrapping her arms around him and giving him a kiss like she used to do when the Women's Group would return from vacation.  He would smile like it didn't phase him much but you could tell she was his world.  I think about her telling me how he would never pick up his socks off their bedroom floor.  And I told her that even though I'm not married, I think it was just his way of saying he still needs her.  She could do that one little thing for him.  Every single day.  And that she should just give up yelling and move the laundry hamper out of the bedroom since he wasn't using it for his socks anyways.  I remember the stories people tell me.  So funny.  So raw.  So human.  So full of love.    

                                              

I had a choice - to either start sobbing from the raw reality of all this, or go find some comfort quickly.  So I drove to a local farm-store and walked up to the ice cream window.  I asked her if they still carried Maine Blueberry which is what I had there a while ago.  She smiled and said, "we don't serve ice cream that is dairy-based anymore ... " and I almost said WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? But I stifled the urge.  Did I want Kale-based or beet-based frozen product?  ARE YOU BLEEPING KIDDING ME?  I looked at her and said I would try the cherry something ... on a sugar cone and she smiled and said, "we don't carry cones either..." SONOFBIACH.  GOLDARNFRIGGIN COMMUNISTS.  I don't give a ratz arse if the cup you put it in is biodegradable or styrofoam that will last in the landfill for 150 years.  In fact, in her honor, (just to get even) I am going to throw a perfectly good styrofoam cup in the landfill this weekend knowing that when I needed it the most, the people of this world could not give me some of the comfort that I find in a simple bowl of ice cream.  Because it is very hard to be midlife and keep seeing dead people.

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Rapunzel, Rapunzel - I think not... and The Cat's Astrophe

I saw her for the first time down the street about a mile.  I thought, "No.  I did not just see her here."  She was so out of her element.  She was all by herself, not necessarily safe, and just strutting around like the world was  her oyster.  A week later I realized she was in my back yard.  I looked up her profile on the internet.  I was not mistaken.  She was a guinea fowl.

Then I started to read her qualities and job description.  All of a sudden I thought of the prospect of getting about six more just like her next spring.  She eats ticks.  She kills snakes.  AND ... at 6:15 a.m. every morning she marches around the perimeter of my house, positions herself where she sees a light coming through a window (or just goes to MY bedroom window) and yells:  "Chuck-chuck-chuck"  and then punctuates it with a sound like a scream and a chainsaw combined.  The first time you hear it you can skip your morning coffee.  I'm just sayin'.

She is chilling with the ducks in the back yard.  They march around doing what they do, fairly merrily.  As my friend Joan once said, "don't get ducks.  We HAD ducks growing up.  They eat everything in front of them, and poop everything behind them."  She was not wrong.  However, now I have a guinea fowl on Staff, eating up all the ticks and hopefully killing snakes for me, although I've seen two I wish I had not seen alive... 

Guinea hens, it is said, do not need a coop.  I wonder what the plan is when winter comes, will she hop in the coop with the ducks when it is negative twenty degrees?  What she does now is:  "Roost."  I was helping my neighbor tuck the ducks into their coop one night and I said to her, "Where's the guinea hen?"  She said teasingly, "I think she likes you.  She is always walking near your house."  That was not the question.  She took her flashlight and shot it straight up over our heads.  There was the guinea hen roosting on the black walnut tree branch about 10-15 feet up.  Wow.  It made me wonder, if she falls asleep and loses her grip, then what happens?  Is it like people when we have a dream like we are falling, and JOLT?!  

I have been rather pre-occupied with looking at potential coops if she is still hanging around in a few months when it gets cold.  I just wish I would hit the lottery or something so I could do right by her.  

But she is not the only new-comer in the 'hood.  At the start of summer, a funky looking calico cat showed up after just having birthed a few kittens.  Mostly they lived on the edge of the woods and skittered back into the leaves and underbrush any time her human fan club tried to visit them.  One neighbor took charge of the feeding and counting of the cats.  Some days we thought there were two kittens, other days, three, and then a fourth was reported at the farm nearby.  They reported to her that they had found the kitten "on the side of the road," and she presumed that meant DEAD.  In fact, it was not, it was just, quite literally on the side of the road.  So they took it into the horse barn, and now one kitten has a Place.

I reported to the Cat Coordinator (my neighbor) that I heard on the radio last month the SPCA was trying to place 96 cats.  That would be: ninety-six, as in four less than one hundred.  Talk about a story that is not going to end well.  So Cat Coordinator reached out to the local shelter and after many messages, they finally said, they would take the mommy cat because... by now it was evidenced that she is expecting yet Another Litter.  We saw the male cat come to visit a few times.  I nick-named him "Lucky" for obvious reasons.  The momma cat I called Carmen.  So Carmen and Load #2 ready for delivery got to go to the no-kill shelter.  Three babies remained outside.  My resolve buckled and  I took the young female... reluctantly.

I had to wait until after I came back from vacation because the dogs in my house are avid cat-fans.  I wanted to be home to supervise, and not stick my dog sitter with that nightmare.  So in my living room, I have two big crates for dogs, one dog roams free, and then a medium crate for the kitty. (I should probably just throw the couch out and let them take over completely.)  The medium crate actually looks like a mahogany coffee table with a kennel under it.  Inside the kennel is a layer of potty pads, a small hand towel for her to sleep on, food & water, and a small litter pan.  I give her credit she has made expeditious use of the litter pan.  So Day #1 was just her sitting in her pan all day looking muy nervioso.  Today the dogs have decided that they like, like, and even Facebook-like her.  I have pictures of wagging butts as they jam their heads on both sides of her kennel.  Unfortunately my chocolate-colored spaniel has decided that the kitty is "HERS" - as in, "get-the-hell-out-she's-mine" to the other  dogs. So I supervise my chocolate crab apple very carefully.

Yesterday afternoon, having been the first full day with her, I was quite anxious to get her vetted and cleared so as to not accidentally bring disease into my household.  She got a clean bill of health.  BUT, we had to wait for literally over TWO HOURS on the sidewalk outside the store that hosts the vet clinic.  It was 80 something degrees.  When I finally got to drive us home I could feel my energy ebbing out of me like low tide at its lowest... this morning I woke up and realized I probably was dehydrated with heat stroke or whatever.  I laid on the couch most of the day hoping life would return to me.

Meanwhile, my 84 year old mother is probably calling around to find out if anyone has such a thing as Animals-Anonymous.  I can imagine my out of state family showing up on my front step for an Intervention, if you will, and hauling me off to some psych facility for hoarders.  I kid you not.  My decision to save this kitty from life as a feral, parasite-infested, appetizer for coy dogs was not an easy one.  I cannot take all three kittens.  I can take one. But I remember the story about the kid throwing starfish into the sea.  To the guy who said, "You can't save them all," the kid replied, "You see this one?  It makes a difference to him."  And he flings a solitary starfish through the air into the ocean.  Starfish-skipping, if you will.  And for those of you who know my email address, now you know the story behind it.

Meanwhile, 3 dogs, one cat, one kitten and two birdies later ... I am keeping the Lysol people in business, and the veterinarian will probably put his other kid through college this year with my help.  Next spring, when Princess Sophia has her first litter of the most amazing spaniels ever, think about adding one.  It's the way the dogs pay for the cat food.